The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3)

by Mary E. Pearce

  The two sisters, if sisters they were, would now be old ladies of seventy or more, but to the Wayman children, coming to the house in 1919, Cicely and Rosina Lane were still two children like themselves, held up as models to one another or used to excuse some fall from grace. ‘Cicely would never have bitten her nails,’ Joanna said to little Emma, and Jamesy, having borrowed something without permission, said scornfully: ‘Rosina would never have made such a fuss about a rotten box of paints!’

  After the house, there were the farm buildings to be explored: stables, cowsheds, cartsheds, barns; and all around lay the meadows and fields, almost two hundred and fifty acres, spreading their slopes to the south-west, and running down to the Derrent brook. The freedom of it went to their heads; released from school at the weekends, they ran wild from dawn to dusk; clattered into the house for meals, and bundled out again in a rush, the instant they were given leave.

  ‘Look after Emma!’ Gwen would call, but they would be gone like mad things, helter-skelter across the yard, with Emma trotting along behind.

  ‘No doubt what they think of Holland Farm,’ Stephen said. ‘How did we manage to keep all that energy pent up close in the house at Springs?’ And sometimes he would say to his wife: ‘What do you feel, now we’re here?’

  ‘Ask me in a few years’ time!’

  It was only a joke, and they both knew it. Leaving Springs and buying the farm was the best thing they had ever done. There were no regrets on either side. They wondered why they had waited so long.

  It was the war that had made up their minds, by showing them where their values lay. Stephen had been gassed in 1918, and the doctor’s advice had been very blunt.

  ‘Get out of doors as much as you can. It’s the only thing for lungs like yours. If you go back to your damned office, you’ll be asking for trouble, no doubt of that!’

  So Stephen sold his partnership in the legal firm of Hallam and Dobbs and worked for a year on a farm near Springs, helping an ex-Army man like himself, and learning something about the land. He had always had a hankering to farm, and Gwen was a Worcestershire farmer’s daughter. They had no one to consider but themselves and their children, for Gwen’s parents were both dead and so were Stephen’s, and the only relations they had left in the world were his two cousins, who lived in India. Land prices were high just then, but he had the money from his partnership and a small gratuity from the Army, and, after raising a mortgage, he was able to buy Holland Farm. His own house and his own land! What better investment could there be for the future of his family? But he worried sometimes, nevertheless.

  ‘I must make a go of it,’ he said. ‘I can’t afford to make mistakes.’

  ‘Of course we shall make a go of it! Why shouldn’t we?’ Gwen said.

  Why not indeed? Farm prices were pretty good, having risen throughout the war, and there were government guarantees. But Stephen knew that the good times would probably not last forever. He therefore went cautiously and was always ready to take advice, either from the neighbouring farmers or from the men who worked for him. These men were there when he took the farm. He made no changes but hoped for the best.

  ‘They’re not a bad bunch,’ Gould had said. ‘There’s only one you’ve got to watch and you’ll soon find out which one that is. He belongs to the union. You’ll soon hear from him!’

  Stephen thought this was prejudice. He was inclined to be amused.

  ‘Is there only one union man among them?’

  ‘One’s enough!’ Gould had said.

  The man in question was Morton George. He had a watchful, suspicious manner, but never looked you in the eye. Stephen decided to reserve judgment. Of the eight men there, he found he liked Bob Tupper best. The others, when they gave advice, made a mystery of the reasons behind it, but Bob Tupper gave it straight.

  ‘I shouldn’t plough the Home Field yet, ’cos that’ll still be workable later on, even when it’s wet. I’d start with the Freelands and the Goose Ground ‒ they’re dry enough now but they won’t be for long.’

  It was the same when buying stock. Bob would go with him to the sales and, with a few quiet words in his ear, tell him what to guard against.

  ‘Not only in the cow,’ as Stephen, laughing, said to Gwen, ‘but in the farmer who’s selling her!’

  Bob knew the district inside out; he was an expert in everything; and Stephen was thankful to have such a man. Bob was in his early forties. Except for two years away in the war, he had been at Holland Farm since the age of eleven, thirty-two years in all, longer than any other man there.

  ‘You should be foreman by rights,’ Stephen said.

  ‘Mr Gould didn’t hold with that, setting one man above the rest. He didn’t hold with paying the extra wages neither.’

  ‘I’m not Mr Gould,’ Stephen said.

  Most of the other men were pleased when Bob’s new status became known. Their jibes were friendly, good-humoured, broad.

  ‘Twopence to speak to you now, is it, Bob?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you wear a bowler hat?’

  ‘Will the news be printed in The Gazette?’

  Billy Rye said the promotion made little difference that he could see.

  ‘Bob’s been telling us what to do for donkey’s years. It’s just been made official, that’s all.’

  Only Morton George seemed less than pleased. He lounged in the office doorway, nibbling a straw.

  ‘I suppose it’s on account of the war.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘Well, you’re both old soldiers, you and him.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. Bob is the senior man here. It’s only right to recognize that.’

  ‘We should’ve voted among ourselves. That’s the proper way to get a foreman.’

  ‘Now look here,’ Stephen began, but was interrupted by Billy Rye.

  ‘If we had’ve voted,’ Billy said, ‘Bob would be foreman just the same cos he’s the best man for the job and we all know it.’ And then, to make light of it all, Billy gave Bob Tupper a nudge. ‘If I don’t get a drink outa you after that, I shall want to know the reason why!’

  Bob Tupper was not the only war veteran at Holland Farm. Nate Hopson was another. On November the eleventh, Armistice Day, these two men arrived for work wearing sprigs of evergreen in their caps, and later on that same morning, carting muck from the muck-bury, they stopped work at eleven o’clock and, removing their caps, stood bare-headed in the rain, remembering their fallen comrades.

  It was not true that Stephen favoured these veterans, but it was inevitable that he should feel some kinship with them. The war had left its stamp on him and them, as on all those men who had gone to the edge of the pit and looked in, and that stamp could be recognized at a glance. Tupper and Hopson saw at once that Stephen had been out at the Front. They heard the huskiness in his voice and knew he had suffered poisoning by gas. They noticed the three crooked fingers of his right hand and the deep scar running up his arm, and they recognized it as a shrapnel wound. And they, although they bore no visible scars, were just as easily known to him. They had a certain look in their eyes, as though they marvelled at everything they saw and yet were weary in their souls.

  They gave themselves away, too, in their habits of speech and the jokes they made, as when Bob referred to his sandwiches as ‘wads’ or gave the time as ‘thirteen-fifteen.’ Once, when the cattle were being driven up an unfenced track between two fields and kept straying out over the ploughland on one side, Tupper, walking behind the plough, shouted to Hopson, in charge of the herd: ‘Watch your dressing by the right there!’

  Stephen would smile on hearing these things, even while he shrank inside. Neither he nor they ever talked of the war. They tried to put it out of their minds, though they couldn’t of course, and would never be able to, all their lives. Still, something was salvaged from the waste: the kinship was there, and it made him smile.

  As for Morton George, who sneered behind Stephen’s back, it w
as partly because he felt left out.

  ‘What do you talk about, you and him? All about how you beat the Hun?’

  ‘The trouble with Mort is, he’s jealous,’ said Nate.

  ‘He should’ve said so before,’ said Bob. ‘He could’ve had my place out there if only he’d asked me in 1916.’

  ‘He was too busy running the union.’

  ‘Oh, you can laugh!’ George exclaimed. ‘Who got your wages up to forty-eight-and-six a week?’

  ‘I shall have to do something about that union of yours.’

  ‘Join it, d’you mean?’

  ‘I shall have to remember it in my prayers!’

  Stephen was determined from the beginning that Gwen should have help in the house, and it happened that there were two women already there, who had worked for Mr and Mrs Gould and were now willing to work for the Waymans. Gwen had been ill with ’flu the previous winter, and the illness had pulled her down badly. She herself would never admit it; she liked to think she was as strong as a horse; but Stephen was concerned for her, and tried to save her all he could.

  The duties of a farmer’s wife overflowed the house itself. The dairy claimed a lot of her time, and there were the chickens, the turkeys, the geese. There were sickly lambs to hand-rear and often a calf that had to be weaned, and later on, at harvest times, she would be needed in the fields. It was useless for Stephen to say that Gwen must not do all these things: she wanted to do everything; it was therefore a comfort to him when Mrs Bessemer agreed to stay on, for she was a cheerful Amazon, with mighty arms and enormous hands, who would surely make nothing of the household chores.

  But Gwen and he soon perceived that although Mrs Bessemer would polish fanatically at the tops of tables, she had a dislike of bending her back, and it was in fact Agnes Mayle, short and dumpy and quick-tempered, who worked the hardest and got things done. Agnes would scold Mrs Bessemer, who spent a whole morning cleaning the silver, and would chivvy her from place to place, thrusting a bucket and mop into her hands and doing her best to make her ashamed.

  ‘How can you sit there, rub-rub-rub, when Mrs Wayman’s slaving away, scrubbing and scouring for all she’s worth? Get into that dairy and give her a hand!’

  There were ding-dong battles between these two, and Agnes Mayle’s rough tongue often prevailed where Gwen’s civil entreaties failed. But on one score at least the two women were in accord, and that was in their devotion to the children. Agnes was an excellent cook, and during the school holidays, the children would sneak in repeatedly, sure of being given a tart or a rock-cake each, still warm from the oven. And Mrs Bessemer, not to be outdone, was a specialist in providing drinks. On cold winter days it was hot cocoa or beef-tea, and in summer-time, when the hot days came, it was ice-cold gingerade, the recipe for which was a jealously guarded secret.

  ‘That’s my Bert’s favourite drink. He’d drink it all day, given a chance. He says nobody makes gingerade like me.’

  ‘It’s not the only thing your Bert drinks,’ Agnes muttered, under her breath.

  Mrs Bessemer’s husband, Bert, was invoked every day at Holland Farm. His word was law, and it seemed he held very strong ideas.

  ‘My Bert don’t like me peeling onions. We never have them at home ourselves. He don’t like me cleaning your silver by rights, on account of it spoiling my hands, and that’s why I have to wear them gloves. He don’t like me spoiling my hands. They’re a woman’s best feature, he always says.’

  Gwen wondered about this fastidious man.

  ‘What does your Bert do?’ she asked, and before Mrs Bessemer could reply, Agnes gave a snort and said: ‘He’s a cowman at Outlands, same as my dad!’

  ‘Second cowman,’ Mrs Bessemer said.

  Gwen was careful not to smile.

  ‘How is it that you both work here, instead of at Outlands, then?’ she asked. ‘I’ve heard Mr Challoner say more than once that he needs someone to help in the house.’

  ‘My Bert wouldn’t like me working there. Mr Challoner’s a widower, as you know, and must be sixty if he’s a day, but he’s got a sweet tooth as the saying is. It’d never do, my going there. Agnes will tell you. She knows what he is.’

  Agnes, by her silence, seemed to concur, but Gwen, to avoid further gossip concerning a neighbour, began to talk of other things. She mentioned it to Stephen, however, later that day, and he was not in the least surprised.

  ‘Challoner ought to marry again. The trouble is, he’s gone up in the world, now that farming is prospering, and there’s no woman in the district worthy of the honour he could bestow.’

  ‘I thought you liked him,’ Gwen said.

  ‘He’s been a good neighbour to me so far. I’ve got no reason to complain. But as for the people who work for him, that’s a different matter, I’m afraid. He talks of his men as though they were dirt.’

  ‘I’m disappointed,’ Gwen said. ‘I thought he was rather a nice man.’

  But, as Stephen said, he himself got on well enough with Challoner, and that was something to be thankful for.

  At its central point, for a hundred yards or so, Challoner’s land ran with Stephen’s; but a lane came down from Puppet Hill, passed through the yard at Outlands Farm, and continued on down to the village; so for two thirds of the way down, the two farms were thus divided. This in itself brought problems sometimes, especially at harvest time, when a loaded waggon from Holland Farm, going down, might meet an empty one from Outlands coming up. But a friendly agreement already existed between the two farms when Stephen arrived, and, by talking things over beforehand, it was easy to avoid serious trouble.

  When the men from Outlands did meet the men from Holland Farm, there was a great deal of swearing and argument between them, before one or the other gave way. But it was only a ritual and was much enjoyed on both sides. There were two tractors at Outlands; there were only horses at Holland Farm; and this meant a certain rivalry.

  ‘When are you going to get mechanized?’ Johnny Marsh would ask, jeering, and Bob Tupper as often would say: ‘When that there trattor drops a foal!’

  Challoner himself often chaffed Stephen on this score. ‘Even old Gould had a tractor, you know, and you’re a young man of thirty-five. I’d have thought you’d be bang up to date, making us older ones open our eyes.’

  ‘I can’t afford to buy tractors yet,’ Stephen said. ‘I want to get my mortgage paid. And I’m happy enough, using horses.’

  There were eight mares at Holland Farm; he meant to breed from them if he could; and one of the first things he did was to buy a Shire stallion at Capleton Mop. There were no good stallions in the neighbourhood, so it seemed a good idea to keep his own, even if it was something of an extravagance.

  ‘Besides which,’ as he said to Gwen, ‘I’ve already had a few enquiries from farmers round about, who’ve got brood mares, so Lucifer will not only be earning his keep but making a profit on the side.’

  When the stallion arrived and Bob Tupper inspected him, he remained silent a long time. It looked as though he disapproved. The stallion’s face was light grey: ‘white as moonlight,’ Gwen had said: but his neck and body were dappled and dark, and his hind quarters were iron-black.

  ‘Well?’ Stephen said, impatiently.

  ‘Strikes me he’s a different horse in front from what he is behind,’ said Bob.

  ‘But what do you think of him?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘I suppose he’ll do,’ Bob said.

  He was not much in favour of keeping a stallion on the farm. It meant a lot of extra work, and who had time for coddling a horse that ate its head off, day in, day out, got the odd mare into trouble now and then, and never did a hand’s turn in front of the plough?

  ‘If that’s all that’s worrying you,’ Stephen said, ‘I’m quite happy to look after Lucifer myself.’

  But that was not right, either, and Bob gave a series of little grunts.

  ‘I daresay I’ll manage to fit it in.’

  And manage it he did, for Lucifer was
always in tip-top condition, beautiful in every respect, and he soon had an excellent reputation with farmers who bred from their own mares. When the stud fees came in they were kept in a cashbox of their own, and every six months or so Stephen would give half the money to Bob Tupper, for him to divide among the men.

  ‘Have a few drinks at The Rose and Crown ‒ Lucifer’s paying!’ he used to say.

  Stephen and Challoner both kept sheep and it was the custom, already established many years, for the two farms to share their shearing, both flocks being done at Outlands one year, Holland Farm the next.

  That year it was Challoner’s turn, and on a fine morning in May, the flocks were herded together at Outlands, and shearing platforms were set up in the big barn. The doors at both sides were open wide and a warm wind blew gustily through, bringing, now and then, a skitter of rain. One doorway had a row of hurdles across it, made to open like a gate; the ewes were let in, a few at a time, delivered into the hands of the shearers, and let out naked the other side, to join their bleating lambs in the fold. Stephen’s shepherd, Henry Goodshaw, got on well with the Outlands shepherd, Arthur Thorne, and to see these two experts handling their clippers, sending the fleeces rippling back, was something that made the children stare. Chris, especially, watched by the hour, and Challoner’s younger son, Gerald, older than Chris by eighteen months, brought him a ewe and some clippers to try.

  ‘Go on, I’ll hold her. Try your hand.’

  Chris wanted to try but he was afraid. Supposing he were to cut the ewe? Reluctantly he shook his head and watched as Gerald displayed his skill.

  ‘Nothing to it!’ Gerald said. ‘Any fool can shear a sheep!’

  The two boys went to the same school, King Edward’s in Chepsworth, but they were at home for Whitsuntide. All the children were on holiday and ran to and fro among the shearers. The older ones helped to tie up the fleeces, and little Emma pottered about, gathering up stray wisps of wool or stirring the warm tar in its pot.

  ‘Come out of that!’ said Morton George. ‘D’you want to get it on your pinny?’