It was seven years since Jim had set foot on Godsakes land and in those seven years its ruination had been complete. In every field it was the same: a wilderness of rank grass and weeds, with clumps of thorn and briar here and there, and hedges so badly neglected that the timber in them stood twenty feet high and brambles spread out over the headlands forming thickets twenty feet wide. No land had been ploughed in recent years and Riddler’s ploughs, together with other implements, lay under a heap of junk in a corner of the crumbling barn. All the farm buildings were in disrepair and, like the land itself, were infested with every kind of vermin. The pig-pens and sties were choke-full with nettles and more than half the hen-coops were fit for nothing but firewood.
‘A sight for sore eyes, eh?’ Riddler said. ‘And all Sutton’s fault, every bit of it. This was a good farm once but when I was given the chance to buy and Sutton ran up the price like that … But there, you know the tale well enough, so there’s no point in dragging it out again. But I can never forgive him for that and never will so long as I live, because that big loan has dragged me down. It’s like as if I were stuck in the mire ‒ the more I struggled, the deeper I sank. Now if only my son Eddy had lived … But it’s no good thinking of things like that and maybe I’ll get a son-in-law instead. Not quite the same as a son of my own, but a whole heap better than nothing at all.’
The two men came to a halt. Their tour had brought them back to the yard and they leant together over the gate, watching the few scrawny hens pecking about in the dust.
‘Well, now you’ve seen all there is to see, what do you think?’ Riddler said. ‘Think you can make a go of it? Pull it together, like you said? There’s still the damned mortgage, remember ‒ six hundred pounds to be paid off yet, plus the interest at four per cent. D’you think, with that millstone round your neck, you can pull the farm back on its feet and get it to pay its way again?’
‘Yes, if you let me have a free hand, to run things my way, as I think best.’
‘Oh, so you’re to have all the say, are you, and I’m to stand by, clapping my hands?’
‘We should discuss things together, of course, as any business partners would.’
‘Discuss things between us,’ Riddler said, ‘and then do exactly what you decide.’
‘You’ve made the decisions up to now and as a result the farm has failed.’
‘It’s not my fault the farm has failed! I’ve had the devil’s own bad luck these past sixteen years and damn well you know it too ‒’
‘Yes, I know it well enough, but as it will be my money we shall be using to start the farm working again ‒’
‘All right, all right, don’t rub it in!’ Riddler said with an angry scowl. ‘Who pays the piper calls the tune. There’s no arguing against that. And if you think you can pull it off …’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Yes, I do. I’ve got to believe it, there’s no other hope. I know you can work ‒ I’ve seen it myself. And you’ve got your head screwed on pretty well ‒ you wouldn’t be Sutton’s bailiff else. If anyone can pull the place together, I reckon it’s you. You’ll get your free hand, right enough, and if it means keeping Sutton out … Well, I don’t need to tell you, but I’d give a great deal to make sure of that.’ He turned his head to look at Jim and after a little while he said: ‘It seems as though, from the way you’re talking, you’ve made up your mind to accept my condition.’
‘Yes, I accept it,’ Jim said.
‘So,’ Riddler said, quietly, and the word came out in a little hiss. ‘It all depends on Kirren, then. Let’s go and see what she says.’
Kirren was standing in the back porchway. She seemed to be looking out for them.
‘Well, miss? Have you made up your mind?’
‘Yes,’ Kirren said. She looked at Jim. ‘If he agrees to it, so do I.’
‘Of course he damn well agrees to it! Can’t you see by the look on his face? There aren’t any flies on this young chap. He sees the good sense of my idea and I’m glad to find, now you’re put to it, that you’ve got the nous to see it, too.’
Riddler was now cock-a-hoop. He could scarcely contain himself. Boisterously, he turned to Jim and clapped one heavy hand on his back, at the same time taking Kirren’s arm and giving it a long, hard squeeze.
‘Come indoors, the pair of you! We’ve still got a few things to sort out yet. And if there’s anything left in the bottle we’ll drink damnation to the Suttons!’
Just after two o’clock Jim returned to Peele House, quietly mounted the stairs to his room, and put his clothes and other belongings into an old canvas satchel. With this slung on his shoulder he went downstairs and was crossing the hall to Sutton’s study when Mrs Abelard came out of the dining-room. Her face clouded at sight of him, especially when she noted the satchel, and, taking his arm, she led him aside, speaking to him in an undertone.
‘There’s been an upset, hasn’t there, about your young lady at Hide House Farm?’
‘Yes, Abby. It’s all gone wrong. She doesn’t want me after all.’ Jim had thought himself strong and hard but under the old woman’s scrutiny he felt himself a boy again and there was a tremor in his voice as he said: ‘She’s going to marry Philip instead.’
‘Mr Philip has stolen her from you. That’s how it is, you mark my words. He was always that way inclined, even when you were boys together. But a girl who changes her mind as easy as that isn’t worth bothering about and I’d say she’s a lot better matched to Mr Philip than she would be to you.’
Jim said nothing and the old housekeeper, seeing his face, clicked her tongue, much vexed with herself.
‘Tchah! What a thing for me to say! As though that was any comfort to you!’ Once again she took hold of his arm, distressed for him, at a loss for words. ‘And are you leaving us, then, for good?’
‘Yes, I’m not wanted here any more. Nor, come to that, do I want to stay. But I shan’t be going far, Abby. Just across the valley, that’s all.’
‘Across the valley?’ Abby gaped. ‘Whatever do you mean by that, Mr Jim?’
Jim’s explanation was cut short because, quietly though he and Abby had talked, John Sutton had heard them and now, opening his study door, he looked out into the hall. Discreetly, the old woman withdrew, vanishing into her kitchen, and Jim turned towards Sutton, who came across the hall to him.
‘What’s this?’ he asked with a frown, touching the satchel on Jim’s back.
‘I thought, since you wanted me to leave, I might as well go straight away. The sooner the better, I think you said, and I am rather inclined to agree. But I’m not going to Ontario. I’m going to Godsakes instead.’
‘Godsakes?’ Sutton said blankly, and then, with quick-growing suspicion, ‘What the devil do you mean?’
‘I’m going to pay Riddler’s debts. We shall be partners, he and I, and we’ll work together to pull up the farm. I’ve just been over there, bargaining with him, and now I’m going back ‒ for good.’
‘My God! You would do that to me?’ Sutton was crimson in the face. ‘You know I’ve always wanted that farm! You know I’ve waited sixteen years!’
‘Yes, I know it very well, just as Philip knew I wanted Jane.’
‘All this fuss over a girl! A pretty face! A pair of blue eyes! Dammit, Jim, just look at yourself! You’re a young man of twenty-four and you’ve got enough about you, in the way of looks and ability, to take your pick from a dozen girls. In a few months from now you’ll have got over this business with Jane and you’ll have no trouble, believe me, when it comes to finding another wife.’
‘I’ve already found one,’ Jim said. ‘I’m going to marry Kirren Riddler.’
‘Riddler’s daughter?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘But you don’t even know the wretched girl!’
‘It would seem I didn’t know Jane, either, for all I understood of her.’
‘My God!’ Sutton exclaimed. ‘Do you mean you are marrying her just to
get hold of Godsakes Farm? A marriage like that won’t bring you much joy!’
‘No, well, you may be right. But we’ll see how much joy Philip’s marriage brings him.’
‘I never thought to see the day when you would do a thing like this to me.’
‘The day,’ Jim said, with irony, ‘has brought surprises for both of us.’
‘After all I’ve done for you, giving you a home all these years! Bringing you up and caring for you, almost as though you were my son!’
‘You’ve always been very good to me and I thank you for it,’ Jim said. ‘But now, although I’ve done nothing wrong, you would like to be rid of me. You would send me away to Canada, a place where I have no wish to be, and no doubt, if you had the power, you would rub me clean off the face of the earth. Well, I am not to be got rid of so easily, simply because, through no fault of my own, I have become an embarrassment to you. Common nobody I may be but I still have the right to run my own life and that is what I intend to do.’
Following these words Jim became silent, looking straight into Sutton’s eyes and seeing there a burning reflection of his own anger and bitterness. Then, with some awkwardness, he said: ‘I’m sorry it’s ending like this. You’ve been a good friend to me until now. But after what’s happened today, well, I can never feel quite the same way again and I know that my going to Godsakes will put paid to our friendship once and for all.’
‘You are going, though, in spite of that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose it’s your idea of revenge.’
‘Whatever it is,’ Jim said, ‘Philip is the one who’s to blame for it.’
A few minutes later, with his long shepherding stick in his hand and his dog, Jess, close at his heels, he was crossing the stable yard, on his way to the gate leading into the pastures. He had his hand on the sneck of the gate when Sutton came out of the house and stood in the open doorway.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘I’m going up to fetch my flock and say goodbye to old Abelard.’
Jim passed through the gate and set off up the fields and Sutton, still red in the face, stood staring grimly after him.
Philip, who had been at Hide House lunching with Jane and her parents, returned to Peele in time to see Jim driving his flock over one of the little bridges spanning the brook in the valley bottom. Finding his father in the front drive, where a good view could be had of the valley, he asked what was going on and in a few pithy sentences Sutton explained.
‘Paying Riddler’s debts?’ Philip repeated. ‘To stop us getting Godsakes Farm?’
‘He not only stops us getting it, but he gets it himself, damn his eyes, for he’s marrying Riddler’s daughter, he says.’
‘Marrying ‒? Is this a joke?’
‘No, it is not!’ Sutton snapped. ‘He’s in deadly earnest, I promise you.’
‘But,’ Philip said, floundering, ‘he can’t possibly make it pay. He hasn’t got the capital. Oh, I know he’s got some money saved, but not a fraction of what he will need to put that farm in order again ‒’
‘Maybe not. But what he’s got is quite enough to keep the place from being sold for another sixteen years or so and by that time I may well be dead. As for not making a go of it, I wouldn’t even be too sure of that, because Jim is a very determined young man. Clever, too. He uses his head.’
‘It would take him half his life ‒’
‘So what if it does? What’s that to him? He is only twenty-four. What better thing could he do with his life than spend it in reclaiming that land?’
‘You think it’s a possibility, then, that he will make a success of it?’ Philip’s face was now thunderous. ‘And yet you stand here quietly, letting him take those sheep off the farm!’
‘The sheep are his. He bought them himself.’
‘With money you gave him, don’t forget.’
‘What’s given is given,’ Sutton said. ‘It can’t be taken back.’
‘I’m not so sure about that. I think we should see old Kelloway. Those sheep were raised on our land and I’m sure if we took it to law ‒’
‘Oh, be quiet, you stupid fool! Even if we did have a claim on those sheep, how would the story sound, do you think, once it got round the neighbourhood? What sort of name should we have after that? What would people think of us?’
‘Good God, it’s monstrous!’ Philip exclaimed. ‘To think of his sneaking off like that and doing a deal with the likes of Riddler just to vent his spite on us! After what we’ve done for him over the past fourteen years ‒’
‘ “We”?’ Sutton said, in a scathing tone. ‘And what have you ever done for him, apart from taking his girl away from him?’ Then, with a quick gesture, he said, ‘Oh, never mind! Let it pass, let it pass! For heaven’s sake, don’t let us two quarrel as well, otherwise where shall we be? But it is a pity all the same that out of all the girls in the district you had to fix your fancy on Jane. It’s lost us Godsakes, there’s no doubt of that.’ Sutton turned to go into the house, but paused just long enough to lay a hand on Philip’s shoulder and to say, with a touch of dryness: ‘Let’s hope she turns out to be worth it, eh?’
Down in the bottom of the valley Jim’s sheep had now crossed the meadows and he was letting them through a gate that led into Godsakes land. From the top of the main farm track Riddler and Kirren stood watching as the neatly bunched flock of fifty ewes came slowly up the sloping fields with the young man and the dog behind.
The sight of these golden-fleeced sheep affected Morris Riddler deeply, for no such first-class stock as this had been seen at Godsakes for many years, and the surge of emotion was so strong in him that when he suddenly turned to Kirren his queer, crooked, shapeless face was lit with a kind of holy joy and, at the same time, wet with tears.
‘Look at them, Kirrie! Just look at them! Did you ever see anything so beautiful in all your born days? Why, that old saying, the Golden Hoof, was never truer than it is for us here today, because that little flock of Cotswold Lions means that this farm is in business again!’
Even Kirren herself was affected and although her glance was sardonic, as always, there was nevertheless a smile on her lips and a gleam of living hope in her eyes. For once she and her father were in accord, sharing the same feelings and thoughts, and he, aware of this sympathy between them, suddenly clasped her in his arms, pressing her head against his chest and giving a little sobbing laugh. Just as suddenly he released her and, with his clumsy, lumbering gait, set off down the track to meet Jim.
Usually dinner at Godsakes was eaten at noon but because of events that day it was almost four o’clock when three people instead of two sat down to eat their first meal together.
‘You won’t find us delicate here,’ Riddler said. ‘Plain boiled bacon and cabbage and taters, that’s what we live on, Kirren and me. You will find it a bit of a change after the way you’ve lived at Peele.’
‘Plain food is good enough for me,’ Jim said.
But the boiled bacon was terrible stuff. The smell of it as he sat down to eat told him what to expect and although he tried to harden himself, at the first mouthful of tainted meat, with its thick coating of rancid fat, his gorge rose in such a way that it required an effort of will to chew the mouthful and swallow it. Taking a generous helping of salt before attacking the meat again, he saw that Kirren was watching him.
‘You don’t have to eat it,’ she said. ‘It can go back in the pot.’
‘If you can eat it, so can I.’
‘We’re used to it. You’re not.’
Riddler ate stolidly, leaning low over his plate, watching Jim with open amusement.
‘You may as well get used to it. There’s a tidy bit of it left yet.’ He pointed up at the rack in the rafters, on which were laid the whole of one flitch and the half of another, each tightly covered in muslin, each with its dark cluster of flies. ‘That old pig was the last we raised. I’ll tell you how he came to die.’
The stor
y of how the pig had died did not make it any easier for Jim to finish eating his meal and when at last he laid down his knife and fork it was with a sense of relief that did not go unnoticed by Riddler.
‘Think you’ll live after that?’ he asked. ‘Think you’ll survive it, do you, eh?’
Jim rose and pushed in his chair.
‘I’m going for another walk round the farm.’
‘Hang on a minute. I’ll come with you.’
‘Thanks, but I’d sooner be alone. I’ve got some thinking to do.’
Looking around the farm again, noting things that had to be done, he could scarcely wait for the morning, so impatient was he to begin. But his first task in the morning would be to go in to town with Riddler and arrange for the payment of his debts, beginning with the mortgage dues, and as it would be market day his second most important task would be to buy new stock for the farm.
But all the time, as he laid his plans, other thoughts were troubling him, and the source of these was the girl, Kirren. He was fretted by feelings of guilt, asking himself what he was doing marrying a girl he cared nothing for; a girl who was so much a stranger to him that until today they had never even spoken together.
For himself he had no regrets; only a bitter satisfaction at taking such a cold-blooded step, as though he would demonstrate to himself and the world that that was all marriage meant to him now. One wife would do as well as another. What did it matter who she was? He would never now want to marry for love. He would not succumb to that weakness again. And although Kirren was a stranger to him, at least he knew where he was with her, for there could be no betrayal where there had been no promise of love.
But Kirren herself ‒ what of her? Was he not doing wrong, taking advantage of her poverty? Hadn’t he, at her father’s instigation, pushed her into this doubtful transaction merely to further his own ends, without proper consideration for her feelings, as a girl, as a woman? These questions gnawed at his mind and when he returned to the house and found Kirren alone in the kitchen he broached the subject immediately.
She heard him out in silence, looking at him searchingly, her eyes very dark under frowning brows, and when he had finished she asked bluntly: ‘Are you having second thoughts?’
The Two Farms: A moving family saga set in a Victorian farming community Page 9
