Jim, as he closed the book and put it away, found that both Kirren and Riddler had been listening to him as he read, and that both were looking at him intently, Riddler lounging in his chair, Kirren sitting erect in hers, with her needlework idle in her lap. After a moment Riddler spoke.
‘You chose well, didn’t you, reading that bit to us?’ he said. ‘It might have been Godsakes he was writing about, except that we never came so low that we had to eat acorns to keep alive.’
‘No, just reisty bacon, that’s all.’
Riddler threw back his head and laughed. He enjoyed these exchanges he had with Jim. And, although he continued to mock, he was more than a little impressed by Jim’s superior learning.
‘Kirrie, you’ve not only married a gentleman but a Latin scholar into the bargain. What do you think of that, eh?’
Kirren, resuming her needlework, snipped off a new length of cotton.
‘I must try not to let it go to my head.’
Chapter Eight
During the worst winter frosts, when all work on the land was stopped, Jim worked on the house instead, replacing tiles that had slid from the roof, repairing ill-fitting doors, and repainting the big kitchen, which was also their living-room. He then began work on the outbuildings, putting new roofs on the sheds, laying new cobblestone floors, and whitewashing all the interiors. With help from Riddler and the other men the most urgent work was done in three weeks, and by then the frosts had gone, making field-work possible again.
‘The rest of the house will have to wait,’ Jim said to Kirren. ‘I’m afraid it may be a long time before we get everything put to rights.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kirren said. ‘The farm must come first, I’m aware of that.’
At least now the kitchen was fresh and clean, with its ceiling and walls distempered white and its oak timbers stained dark brown, and Kirren, cheered and encouraged by this, was adding improvements of her own. She had made new curtains, for one thing, and these, of a thick baize-like material in a pattern of rusty reds and browns, gave the room a look of warmth. She was often buying new things now that the poultry money was hers to spend as she pleased, and gradually the big room was becoming more homely and comfortable. There was new brown-and-white china on the dresser now, and a new set of earthenware jugs, brown-glazed outside, pale yellow within, eight of them in different sizes, standing on a shelf of their own.
One day, having been in to town alone, she returned wearing a new dress of dark green worsted, ribbed in black, with a double cape of the same stuff, and a black beaver hat with a curled brim. It happened that as she drove into the yard, Riddler and Jim were standing there, and both men stopped talking to stare at her as she drew up. Riddler was deeply impressed by his daughter’s new outfit and hurried forward to help her down, a thing he never did as a rule.
‘Why, Kirrie, I hardly recognized you, all dressed up to the nines like that! I thought it was some fine lady or other coming to call on us out of the blue.’ And as he helped her down from the trap, he looked her over from top to toe. ‘Lord, I’m struck all of a heap,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea you had it in you to look so very handsome.’
Kirren, with a satirical glance, extricated her hand from his and turned to take something from the trap. It was a large rectangular parcel, bulkily wrapped in paper and sacking, and she handled it with great care.
‘What’ve you got there?’ Riddler asked.
‘You’ll see when we get indoors,’ she said.
Jim now went to the trap and took out the two heavy baskets of shopping. Riddler touched him on the arm.
‘What do you think of your wife’s finery?’
‘I think pretty much the same as you.’
‘Would you say she looked stylish, now?’
‘Yes, I would, most certainly. Stylish and elegant, I would say.’
‘Do you know,’ Riddler said, as they followed Kirren into the house, ‘I never noticed until today what a fine handsome figure she’d got on her.’
‘Hadn’t you?’
‘No, I had not, and I reckon it must be the cut of the skirts and the way they flare out from the waist like that.’
‘Fine feathers,’ Jim said.
‘Right so,’ Riddler agreed. ‘Still, she must’ve caused quite a stir, going about the town like that, looking so stylish and elegant.’
Kirren, although she had coloured a little, bore their comments with composure, walking before them into the house, the bulky parcel clasped in her arms.
‘Whatever stir I caused in the town was nothing to the stir I seem to be causing here at home.’
‘Well, open your parcel, girl,’ Riddler said, ‘and let us see what it is you’ve bought.’
What Kirren had bought was a pendulum clock, old but in excellent working order, in a case of polished mahogany, and with an engraved brass face bearing the maker’s name, John Smith, and the words Tempus Fugit.
‘That’s one bit of Latin I do know, and it speaks the truth,’ Riddler said.
Jim hung the clock on the wall straight away. He wound up the heavy weights, set the brass pendulum swinging, and cautiously turned the single hand, waiting at every half-turn while the clock struck, then setting it to the correct hour.
‘Nice to have a clock in the place again,’ Riddler said approvingly. ‘This room is beginning to look very nice, with all the bits and pieces you’ve bought. More cheerful, like. More homely and kind.’
‘And not before time,’ Kirren said.
‘How much did you pay for the clock?’
‘Why, what business is that of yours?’
‘I was just thinking to myself that if ever we fall on hard times again, at least we’ll have something worthwhile to sell when we need some ready cash, eh?’
Kirren’s face flushed darkly. ‘You will not sell that clock,’ she said, speaking with angry emphasis, ‘nor any of the other things in this room, because I bought them and they are mine and you had better remember that!’
‘God Almighty!’ Riddler said. ‘Can’t you take a joke, girl?’
‘It is no joke to me,’ Kirren said, ‘that you’ve stripped the house bare over the years.’
‘I couldn’t help but sell those things! I needed the money to pay the bills!’
‘And how much of it went on drink?’
‘Dammit, I’ve had enough of this! I’ll take myself off outside and make myself useful there, looking after your pony for you and putting your trap away in the shed!’
Riddler went out, slamming the door, and Kirren, her temper not yet spent, began gathering up the sheets of brown wrapping-paper, smoothing them out and folding them with quick, angry movements of her hands. Jim turned towards the door but paused a moment and looked back at her.
‘It was only a joke, after all. Surely you must know that.’
‘Oh, I know it well enough,’ Kirren said, putting the paper away in a drawer, ‘but I’ve never cared for my father’s jokes and I doubt if I shall learn to now.’
Anger was always close to the surface in all Kirren’s dealings with her father and it was easy to see why. The man was so rough and insensitive; everything he did was clumsy, ill-judged, often to the point of brutishness.
One morning in early March a polecat got in among the poultry and the noise and commotion were such that Jim and Riddler, who were in the barn, ran out to the yard immediately, followed in a moment by Kirren herself, who came hurrying out of the house. The polecat, laying about him in murderous fashion, took fright when the two men shouted at him and quickly made off, leaving behind him, on the ground, the mangled remains of three pullets, one of which still shuddered and twitched.
Riddler, bawling at the top of his voice, threw a stone at the fleeing polecat and then, still cursing and swearing, picked up the three mangled pullets and ran with them to the pig-run, hurling them over to the pigs who gathered at once to gobble them up. As he came lumbering back again, wiping his hands on his corduroys, Kirren confronted him in a ra
ge.
‘Why did you do that?’ she cried. ‘One of those pullets wasn’t properly dead!’
‘Well, it will be by now!’ Riddler said. ‘The old sow has made sure of that.’
Kirren, with a little exclamation, walked quickly away from him. Her face, Jim saw, was stiff with disgust. Riddler stood scowling after her, but when he turned and met Jim’s glance, it was with a certain sheepishness.
‘Women!’ he said defensively, as they walked back to the barn together. ‘The damned bird was torn to shreds. Its head was half hanging off! So what was I supposed to do? Get the doctor out to it?’
‘You should have wrung its neck,’ Jim said, ‘quickly, in the proper way.’
‘What difference does it make? Either way, it ends up dead!’
‘Women are sensitive about such things.’
‘Too damned sensitive if you ask me.’
‘Would you have them be hard as nails?’
‘Oh, Kirrie can be hard enough when she likes.’
‘Yes, well, she’s had a hard life.’
‘And what about me?’ Riddler said. ‘Haven’t I had a hard life, keeping from going under all these years?’
‘Yes, but it’s different for you,’ Jim said. ‘You’re a man. You can choose what you do. And you chose to stay put and fight for your farm, although you knew it meant hardship and poverty and possible failure at the end. But Kirren’s a girl. She had no choice. And there can’t have been much joy in her life, slaving away here with you for the past sixteen years or so.’
‘You’re just talking flannel, boy. Of course us men decide what to do, and if wives and daughters are what they should be, they’re grateful to us for doing it. As for the joy in Kirren’s life, it’s up to you to give her that, and the sooner you get around to it the better because then perhaps she’ll have something to do besides making a damned fuss over two or three bloody fowls!’
Riddler strode into the barn, seized the handle of the turnip-cutter, and began turning it vigorously, resuming the work that had been interrupted by the commotion in the yard. Jim followed him into the barn and stood watching him as he worked.
‘In answer to what you’ve just said to me I feel I really must point out ‒’
‘God, what a meal men make of things when they’ve had a good schooling!’ Riddler said.
‘You know the terms of my marriage to Kirren. You should do, since it was all your idea. A business arrangement, nothing more. That was what we agreed between us.’
‘Yes, yes!’ Riddler said, grunting as he turned the machine. ‘But that was all of six months ago. I thought you’d have seen some sense by now.’
‘You mean you expected things to change?’
‘Of course I expected things to change! You’re a man, aren’t you, not an oddmedod? Flesh and blood like the rest of us? The same needs as other men?’ Riddler stopped working and stood erect, breathing loudly and heavily. ‘You’re not still hankering after that girl who went and married Philip Sutton, are you?’
‘No. I am not. But there’s still no question of any change in my relationship with Kirren.’
‘Oh, you’ll come round to it in the end, sooner or later, you mark my words. You wouldn’t be human otherwise. A man needs a woman to be a proper wife to him. It’s only natural and right. And as for Kirren, well, I know she’s got queer ideas about marriage and men, but she’ll get over that in time, especially if you manage her right. I’m as sure of that as I am of death. A fine healthy chap like you, and a girl like her, built as she is! You’re bound to come to it in the end. But don’t take too damned long over it. I want to see a few children running about on this farm before I go to join my own wife under the sod in the churchyard.’
Riddler now took up a shovel and began shovelling the cut turnips into a wheelbarrow. Jim watched him, half vexed, half amused.
‘Have you ever spoken to Kirren about these ideas of yours?’
‘Why? D’you think I should?’
‘No, I do not,’ Jim said. ‘I think you should put it clean out of your mind, for nothing will ever come of it.’
Riddler, still shovelling, shot him a glance.
‘Yes, well, we shall see,’ he said.
Under the brisk March winds, which blew hard and cold along the valley, the land was drying out nicely, and Jim, preparing for his first batch of lambs, chose a field known as the Browse, which lay up behind the house and was sheltered from the north by a belt of trees. The fifty ewes now folded here were those he had brought with him from Peele. They were due to start lambing in a few days’ time.
Jim had placed shallow troughs in this field and into them the ewes’ extra feed, so much oilcake and so much pulped turnip, was carefully measured twice every day. He had set up three hurdle pens and had scattered plenty of straw in them and here and there about the field he had placed a number of straw bundles, each securely tied with twine, so that the ewes, and their lambs when they came, would have warm ‘cooches’ as Abelard called them, against which to shelter from wind and rain.
Riddler, as was only to be expected, viewed these preparations with amusement.
‘What about warming-pans?’ he asked.
But this would be the first crop of lambs to be born at Godsakes for many years and now that the time was drawing close he was struck with a kind of anxious excitement, as though he could scarcely believe in these lambs that Jim took so for granted and talked of in such a glib way.
‘I was never keen on sheep myself, and I only ever kept a few, even in the old days. They seemed more trouble than they were worth and I never held the patience for fussing and fiddling over them. But you’re a different case altogether. You’ve got the patience of Job himself. And it shows in your flock. They’re just about as pretty a bunch as any you’d see in all Gloucestershire. I’m proud to have such sheep on my farm. I am, that’s a fact.’
‘I’m quite proud of them myself.’
Jim was beginning the work of clatting. He had a ewe between his knees and was trimming away the soiled wool from under the tail and around the udder.
‘I’ll help you with that if you like,’ Riddler said.
‘No, there’s no need. I can manage all right.’
‘Won’t let me near your precious ewes, not with a pair of clippers, eh?’
‘You admit you lack patience with them.’
‘And what about when the lambs start to come? Will you let me help you then?’
‘Well, I’ve got Billy Smith coming to help with the lambing. He’s a good boy with sheep. He’s got the makings of a good shepherd.’
‘And I haven’t, you mean to say?’
‘I think you’ve left it a bit late.’
‘Cheeky devil!’ Riddler said.
This early lambing went well and was all over in three weeks. The fifty ewes produced sixty-four lambs and of these sixty-two were raised. One ewe died giving birth to twins and these were kept in a pen in the barn, where Kirren tended them during the day, giving them milk from a newly calved cow. The twin lambs were sickly and delicate; so small that when she fed them she held them easily under one arm, letting them suck in turn at the bottle, on which she had fixed a washleather teat.
Riddler was very well pleased with the results of this early lambing but he disapproved of Kirren’s efforts to rear the two orphaned lambs.
‘It’s nothing but a waste of time, rearing lambs by hand,’ he said. ‘Even if they pull through, they never amount to anything much.’
‘What would you have me do with them? Throw them to the pigs?’ Kirren said.
‘Christ Almighty!’ Riddler said. ‘Am I never going to be let to forget what I did with those damned fowls of yours?’
He went off, muttering, and ten minutes later was mounting his mare out in the yard. It was a Friday and he was going in to the town to draw money from the bank for paying the men’s wages next day. As he rode across the yard Kirren came out of the barn and he shouted over his shoulder at her.
; ‘If I bring you back three pullets in place of the three the polecat took, shall I get a bit of peace at last?’
‘I don’t want your pullets,’ Kirren said.
‘Well, you’ll get them whether you like it or not, and be damned to you for a nagging bitch!’
He was gone all day and when he returned after dark he was very drunk. He rode right up to the back porch and hammered on the door with his fist and when Kirren, who was alone in the house, reluctantly went out to him, he leant forward in the saddle and dropped a closed basket at her feet. As promised, he had brought her three pullets.
In leaning so far forward, however, he lost his balance and pitch-rolled head over heels to the ground, bringing his saddlebags down with him. A faint sound came from his lips, half chuckle, half groan, and he made some effort to scramble up. But the effort proved too much for him; he gave another feeble groan, rolled himself over onto his back, and lay stretched, out insensible.
It was not the first time that Kirren had had to take charge of the mare, removing saddle and bridle, cleaning her and feeding her and bedding her down for the night. Nor was it the first time that Riddler had slept out in the yard, with a folded sack under his head and a horse-blanket thrown over him. Kirren performed these rough ministrations almost without a second thought. She then went to the poultry yard and put the three pullets into a coop, scattering a little grain for them and putting water for them to drink. By the time she returned, Jim had come in from the sheep-fold and was standing over Riddler’s body. He had a lantern in his hand.
‘He’s pretty far gone.’
‘Yes,’ Kirren said.
‘You surely don’t mean to leave him like this?’
‘Yes, I do. He’s used to it.’
‘Lying out on these cobblestones, on a fresh night like this, when it may well rain?’
The Two Farms: A moving family saga set in a Victorian farming community Page 12
