“But we depend on those roots to hold the bullocks in the Bustard Yard.”
“I got no orders about that,” repeated Luke. Then with expressionless face he said, “I give up being steward. I’ll look after the hosses, and no more.”
*
Boy Billy in his seventeenth year was beginning to outgrow the child Phillip had always thought he had known. A faint smudge was now apparent on his upper lip. In colouring and nature he took after his mother’s side. He was fair, like his dead mother; Phillip was dark, or was before his hair turned grey. Were the patterns of their minds, after all, different? He was beginning to find it increasingly hard to talk with Billy. Too often a ‘talk’ became a monologue or lecture on Phillip’s part, and a kind of stoical silence on Billy’s: a condition which Phillip tried to check in himself, without result. He knew now that he had done wrong in taking him away from school at the beginning of the war. What standards could Billy acquire from village contacts? He had believed that he could train him to be a farmer, so that at the earliest opportunity Billy would be able to farm the land for the family, and later for himself.
Phillip had been much worried, because the ‘training’ seemed to have produced results opposite to those he had imagined. There was the occasion when, arriving at Lower Brock Hanger—the steepest field where they were to grow roots that season—Phillip had smelled an over-hot engine, and telling Billy to stop, asked him if he had checked the oil level of the sump that morning.
Luke, who was present, said, “Thet’s right. Boy Billy and me checked the oil this mornin’, didn’t us, Boy Billy?”
“Was it topped up?” asked Phillip.
“Thet’s right, I saw it myself.”
“Well, something’s wrong.”
Phillip cleaned the dipstick, dropped it back, and lifting it once more saw that its end just touched a black, tar-like liquid.
“If you had gone on, Billy, the big-ends and the main-bearings would have run, and the engine been shattered. And as you know, it now takes anything up to six months to have an engine repaired, while new engines are unobtainable. A full oil sump is absolutely necessary, especially up this steep slope of one-in-five.”
“’Twas full this morning,” said Luke.
Phillip went away and returned with the draining bowl and a can of new oil. The old oil, black and thick with long use, drained from the sump was less than a pint; the sump held five pints. There was no leakage from cylinder head or crankcase; the cylinder bores were not worn. Obviously the dipstick had not been looked at for weeks.
“Are you sure you checked the dipstick level this morning, Luke?”
“Not me. I saw Billy check it. Didn’t I, Boy Billy?”
The youth looked embarrassed, and muttering, “I dunno,” shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Phillip refilled the sump, and ploughed the remaining two acres of the Lower Brock; and at the end of the day the oil in the sump was at the top-mark of the dipstick, and only slightly discoloured: so no damage had been done to the engine.
*
That had been in March, when Luke was still the steward; now it was August: the men stood around, waiting. What could he put them to? Oh, why hadn’t the roots on the Lower Brock been horse-hoed? They could not grow in that soil unless they had the moisture conserved under a surface of loose tilth. What would the bullocks in the winter have to feed on? The Island Fortress was almost on starvation rations—one egg a month, two ounces of butter a week, a very little tea and sugar, for town dwellers.
It was no good thinking of the past. The immediate problem was wet weather work. Weakly he heard himself saying with assumed amiability to Luke, “Well, will you tidy up the Corn Barn? Pick up all the corn sacks, and sort out the rat-gnawn ones from the others. I’ll take them to the factory again to be repaired. Pile the gnawn ones neatly, I’ll take them to town when I go next. Hang the good ones on the pole, out of the way of rats.”
“Right you are,” said Luke and went off to the Barn. At 7.20 a.m. Steve turned up and said, “What shall I do?”
Phillip asked him if he would continue creosoting the beams of the Corn Barn, where he had left off. “You used the pail and brushes last, so you’ll know where they are. I couldn’t find them just now in the oil-house. And Billy the Nelson, will you look out all the thatching brooches? They should be in the left hand corner of the cart-shed. Have the haystacks been all right, Matt?”
“Your paper patent that you and that man put on blew off,” said the stockman, gazing at the sky. He could not resist adding, “I told you so.”
“Is the meadow hay spoiled?”
“No-o. Only wants thatchin’.”
“What do you want me to do?” said Dick.
Powerful Dick, the massive labourer of Norman name and origin, had been engaged originally to pull mud from the grupps. Labour was scarce; and when Phillip had asked him to stay after the draining had been done, Dick had demanded, and got, a higher rate of pay. This had caused jealousy among the other men. There had been a slight altercation over his insurance stamp, too. Dick stuck this every week on his card himself, which meant that Phillip was breaking the law by not doing it as his employer. It was a higher category stamp than that of agricultural labourer; for he had originally come on contract work, naming his own price, eight shillings a chain of twenty-two yards; but after the first week he had complained that there was nothing in it. So Phillip had let him continue pulling mud on his time, giving him an extra shilling a day, on Luke’s recommendation, who said the work was hard graft.
Dick had made a good job of the dykes; and later, of hedge-laying when the dykes were finished. He had a hard head, he was a powerful man’ despite his limp. He was rough with his tongue at times. Once, when Phillip stopped sixpence off his wages for being half an hour late, he got angry, and with neck flushing, threw down his billhook (or rather Phillip’s billhook, for he would not supply his own tools, except a pitching fork) and shouted, “I tell you straight, I’ll be glad to leave this bloody muck-up!”
It was an arresting description of the Bad Lands, and probably derived, Phillip thought, from the word muck-heap. As that was what, more or less, he thought of it himself, Dick’s description did not disturb him at all. Indeed, he felt it to be something they could share in common. Dick with his war-wound was known to be short-tempered, and this outburst on that occasion was natural.
“Stopping me sixpence, as though I wor’ some bit of a bloody boy!”
Thus the Nordic invader in the last decades of the eleventh century had glared at Saxon and Celt, ready to cut down both. Nearly nine hundred years later tools were flung down by the Old River, and Dick prepared to stump off home. Phillip compromised by giving him the price of a gallon of beer to compensate for the sixpence.
“What do you want me to do?” Powerful Dick repeated, standing out of the rain by one of the square oak posts between the bays of the hovel.
“Help with the hovel, will you? Make it look nice and orderly, like the Domesday Book of your ancestors. Come on, Billy, let’s have a look round.”
In his father’s absence Boy Billy had been taking the orders to the men, Lucy being deputy manager. At least, that is how it had been arranged in words. Phillip did not realize, at the time, that neither mother nor son had wanted such responsibility thrust upon them—particularly Billy, who as a smaller boy had been patronised by the men; and for that reason had found it impossible to resist their objections, should the order be, in the ex-steward’s word, ‘silly’.
“I think you’ll be surprised at the oats on the Cold Old Land, Dad,” said Billy almost cheerfully, now they were clear of the premises.
These oats grew on the narrow north end of the Steep. The stalks were a rich yellow-brown from which arose thick golden-greasy sprays, heavy with grain, lying over the sheaf-heads. The sheaves, lying on the ground, needed to be set up in stooks, for the wind to dry. Each sheaf was weighty. The heads might have been of lacquered brass.
How had it happened?
Was it Matt’s sheep—those walking dung-carts? Not entirely. The secret of how to cultivate those three acres of so-called barren land lying between the woods had been discovered by accident.
Over the past three years Phillip had chalked the Cold Old Land; scattered basic-slag on it; covered it with mud from the dykes; bare-fallowed it. It had grown a crop of mustard well, for the sheep to eat; but two succeeding corn crops had failed: the first, winter wheat, the second, winter oats and tares. The plants had simply died away. It was an ugly-looking area of land. The soil felt to be grumpy, irreconcilable.
Father and son, returning one Sunday afternoon of the previous March from drilling the Scalt with oats, happened to have some seed left in the box of the drill. Phillip wanted to get rid of it, for the next drilling was to be barley. So they went up and down the Cold Old Land which was as good a place as any on which to empty the unwanted seed. The iron coulters left lines about an inch deep in the soil, and the seed lay unburied in those lines. The oats could not be used for hens because they were pink with mercuric powder, to kill spores of fungus
.“We simply left the seed exposed, didn’t we, Billy?”
“Yes. On the frost-slain vetches and winter oats.”
“No ploughing, no cultivations, just seed running out of the drill. Do you remember the two cock pheasants that came out of the Bustard covert and started to pick it up as we left?”
“But I rolled-in the remaining seed with the heavy rib-roller next day, if you remember, Dad.”
“So you did—it was an excellent idea of yours. I wonder if ploughing is wrong for some kinds of land? If we had ploughed this bit the moisture would have gone out of it, and the oats been no better than those on the Scalt.”
They were standing on the ridge between the two fields. From here could be seen distant marshes and the North Sea. It was a beautiful view, for anyone with an unencumbered mind; but with the chronic feelings of things never being right—the everlasting difference in ideas between himself and his fellow men—Phillip could seldom enjoy the view. He did feel happiness at seeing it now, however: for the Cold Old Land oats were a wonderful sight. Perhaps it was Matt’s ewes, after all: for, as they walked along the ride leading to Brock Hanger, he said to Billy that the Lower Hanger soil, biscuit-dry and biscuit-coloured, was not really different from that of the Cold Old Land.
They crossed the olland, or aftermath, of the brittly hay of Higher Brock. What a failure that hay had been! All the seeds of rye-grass gone to waste. But was it a failure? Billy pointed out that the seeds of clover and rye-grass which had dropped there during the over-late haysel had sprouted. The rain which had fallen while Phillip was in the West Country had made them chit. And the seedlings had taken root, rising among thickening clover aftermath.
“You’re right, Billy!”
“Will you make silage of this, Dad?”
“I think it’d better be let grow awhile—no! Wheat must go in here, we’re ordered to grow it by the War Committee. Billy! Why not plough the Higher Brock now, while the stiff ground is damp? Then we shall have the seed-bed ready! We’ll leave the headland here unploughed, for the Flying Column to come up and down. We’ll thresh the twenty acres of pedigree Squarehead wheat on the Bustard early, if I can get the engine and box from Gladstone Gogney. We must sell the wheat for once-grown pedigree seed, else we shan’t be able to make the extra price. We’ll keep back some seed for ourselves.”
“But will we get Gogney’s tackle in time for seed-wheat, Dad?”
“I asked, last May, for the threshing drum to come here early, but I’ll remind him when I get home. So if we plough now, we’ll be able to drill some of the Squarehead wheat early on this high ground, and so get a good plant before the frosts. Don’t you think that’s right?”
Billy said he didn’t know. They were now on the way to the Lower Brock Hanger. Those neglected roots! The mangolds growing there were still golf and cricket ball size, as when Phillip had left for Devon. He tried to restrain himself but the miserable sight made him cry, “See how hard and brick-like the soil is between the rows! How can they grow? Why didn’t you have them horse-hoed?”
“I dunno.”
“Didn’t mother tell Luke to get them done, as I wrote, and also telephoned?”
“Yes,” he said. “Only Luke said it was too wet.”
“But did it rain all the time?”
“Most days it did.”
“You should have watched your chance. This land can be slippery one morning, and dry the same afternoon. What feed shall we have for the fourteen bullocks going into the yard up here? For five months we must hold them here, treading the straw of two stacks into muck to be spread on this starved yellow soil. And the only food they will get during the winter will be these wretched roots! They won’t last two months, let alone five! There’s only a five-hundred-gallon tank for rainwater, and much of the water they’ll require should be in the roots. Now we’ll have to sell them in January, probably, when no one wants store cattle—the worst possible time to sell stores!”
He stood still. He shouldn’t have gone to Devon. If Luke couldn’t or wouldn’t take orders from him in former days, how could Lucy and Billy prevail? Seeing his son’s face, he thought of an Austrian postage stamp surcharged, or over-printed, by the image of Hitler, after the Anschluss of 1938. Was he over-printing Billy?
“The blame is mine entirely, Boy Billy. Of course Luke knows how necessary it is to keep the soil friable between growing roots. A couple of hours stirring this soil with the horse-hoe when it was damp would have made all the difference between a quarter-crop and a half-crop.”
“Luke says it’s the Bad Lands.”
“I say it’s the Bad Farmer. That’s me!”
Clouds were breaking, it felt warm, as though the sun were about to shine through the low nimbus overcast. Wind was from the south-west. Was that the rattle of a reaper-and-binder in the distance? Was Charles Box cutting already, while he’d sent the men to footle about their own mess in the hovel, where they were probably smoking despite the Fire Insurance notice in red letters displayed on one beam?
“We’ll begin ploughing the Higher Brock Hanger right away. It’s in proper fettle. The flag must be covered properly. That is to say, use the deep-digger plough. You know what the flag is, don’t you? It’s the fringe of grass on the far side of the furrow-slice. We don’t want any clover or grass growing. The deep-digger will flop it all over and bury it. I’ve got a little superphosphate put by, we’ll broadcast it on the seed-bed. If this wet is bad for harvest it’s good for quick ploughing. Is the old tractor on rubbers, or iron wheels?”
“On rubbers, all ready for drawing the reaper.”
“Well done, Billy. By the way, we must get some steel spud-wheels for the Ford-Ferguson, it won’t plough this stiff land properly with tyres. They’ll slip. A new pair of rear wheels costs an awful lot—forty-five pounds—that’s the Lend-Lease price. Eight pounds before the war. I must advertise for a pair. They’re very hard to get.”
“How about drawing the reaper with the new Fergie, Dad? It would be just the right speed in second gear. Then we could keep the old Dicker on spud-wheels, and not interrupt the ploughing.”
“That’s a jolly good idea! Let’s go down and get it, and start at once. Look, this soil is beautifully moist, after all the rain. It’s now or never, with this yellow brick, or breck soil.”
The new improved model of the Ford-Ferguson hydraulic tractor, sent on loan to Phillip by Harry Ferguson, then in America, was bigger than the old machine Billy called the Dicker—the Donkey—with a stronger engine. It had an adjustable chassis, with a range of wheel widths for two-crop cultivation. It had a self-starter, and an engine smooth as a motor-car engine. It was comfortable to drive. The engine had a vapouriser, and ran on paraffin.
*
The weather cleared. They could now cut. Luke and Billy worked until 9.30 p.m. with reaper-and-binder, while Phillip ploughed the green olland. The furrows turned up l
oose and crumbling behind the deep-dig plough pulled in bottom gear.
The next day they set up oat sheaves around the edges of the Scalt, carting those from the lower boundary to the centre of the field where the winds would dry them. It rained again that evening, but on the following day, a Sunday, it was fine, so Phillip ploughed more of the Higher Brock. It rained again towards nightfall. He hoped that the heavy golden-brown oats on the Cold Old Land would not sprout. They were soaked. The weight of corn and water in them made them twice as heavy as the sheaves on the Scalt.
On the Monday it was still raining, but when it cleared later they started to cut the pedigree wheat on the Bustard, continuing early the following morning. Wheat can be cut, and stacked, wet. The strong round straw allows air to pass through. It was a fine crop, estimated thirteen sacks to the acre. The straw was thick and pinkish.
All day, rain or no rain, Phillip ploughed-in the aftermath of the hay on the Higher Brock. The rye-grass was now over a foot high. That would help to give it much-needed humus. He was convinced that this land, swept by east winds, should have wheat sown as soon as possible after August, to establish a plant before starlings flew in flocks over the North Sea to dig up the milky grains. With their equipment, he told Billy, they ought never to have a crop failure on the farm, as had sometimes happened in the old days of draught-bullocks and apple-wood ploughs scratching the soil.
He continued up and down the field, turning to watch with satisfaction moist soil covering the green flag of grass and clover. The hay-seeds he had drilled there last season, against the advice of both Matt and Luke, a day or two after the barley was sown, had made a fine plant. The barley straw at harvest had been short, clover-layer high, the corn an excellent crop considering the drought of June and early July—this had been during and after the blitzkrieg in France. He had discovered that on the Bad Lands the small-seeds should be drilled immediately on top of, but across, the barley. It was a district of light rainfall—and a soil of poor fertility. In the old days of great ewe-flocks, small-seeds broadcast after charlock-harrowing had a chance of growth: but not in a soil nearly as infertile as brick. Matt’s ideas came from the days of ‘Old Buck’, days of good beer and good soil, both from the sheep’s golden hoof.
Lucifer Before Sunrise Page 15
