Late Harvest

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  It was so exactly like James to go on about improving a herd of cattle, when the real subject under discussion was his own marriage. His mind was for ever trapped in the practical. I had hardly ever heard him laugh, in all the time I’d known him. He was so dull, I thought, that I could not now imagine how I had ever thought I could marry him. I hadn’t realized, not until I looked into Ralph’s eyes, just how tedious a lifetime with James Bright would be. And now, he had made it clear, by accident but quite definitely, that he had already been thinking of Foxwell as his.

  ‘I’m sorry, James. I can’t. It’s Ralph for me now. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. But there’s many a fine young woman on many a farm on the moor; you’ll find someone else and soon you won’t even remember me. It’ll work out well in the end.’

  ‘Peggy …’

  ‘No, James. No, please, don’t say any more. Please.’

  ‘All right,’ said James, now much on his dignity. ‘I’ve seen a ring in Minehead. Just one diamond, but it was pretty. Still, I dare say a family of free traders can manage a whole circlet of them.’

  ‘James, don’t! I’m not like that. You know I’m not like that.’

  He got up and came over to me, looming over me as I sat in my chair, and reached out as if to pull me up into his arms. I held myself away and said: ‘No, James, please. It won’t do any good.’

  Anger flickered in his eyes then; for a few seconds I was almost afraid of him. Then his face softened and he stepped back.

  ‘All right. Sorry. Listen, Peggy, I’m here. If things don’t turn out right … if you change your mind … I’m still here, though it’s goodbye just for now.’

  He went out of the room. I sat on, trying not to cry. Ralph mustn’t see me crying because of James.

  In fact, as my mother told me afterwards, they all stayed on in the kitchen for a while in case I needed to do a bit of weeping. ‘I told them it would be natural; you’re not heartless,’ she said to me. ‘Just a pity you’re senseless instead!’

  When they did come back, it turned out that they too had done some talking together. Bronwen Duggan, who had much of the peacemaker in her mentality, had suggested that I should spend a month staying with the Duggans in Minehead, to see how well I would adapt to life there, and to give Ralph and me a chance to get to know each other a good deal better than we did now. My mother now replied to this and her answer startled both Bronwen and me.

  ‘Make it six weeks,’ Mother said grimly. Her usually gentle features had hardened. ‘Six weeks, from the end of May. The two of them had better not see each other for a month; let them cool off. But if they’re still of the same mind then, Peggy shall come to you at the start of June and stay till halfway through July. Let her find out, thoroughly, what it’ll be like, livin’ in a world that b’ain’t hers. Farming folk and seafaring folk don’t mix, never have mixed, can’t ever mix. They’m different worlds. She’ll want to come home before the six weeks are out, mark my words, but don’t you let her. Let her find out the hard way that your life b’ain’t right for her. I want her pleading to come home.’

  We stared at her and she stared at me. ‘But if you don’t change your mind, then come home in July and we’ll start seein’ to your brideclothes and you’ll be married from here and that’ll be it. I’ll do right by ’ee, never fear.’

  I said nothing, but I was thinking. I need only wait till May is out and then, for six wonderful weeks, I shall see Ralph every day.

  It was settled. The Brights, sullen and still scowling, took themselves off. I was bound to have a lot of baggage for a six-week stay, Josiah said. When the time came, I should travel by sea. He and Ralph would meet us at Porlock, the nearest port to us, and they’d get there in their own small boat.

  ‘We’ve a fine little boat,’ he told us, ‘and if we call it the Bucket that’s just our fun. We’ll sail you back to Minehead. You can shift your things by trap to Porlock; it’s no more than a few miles. And you can start getting used to the idea of marrying into a seafaring family!’ he added.

  And from Minehead, Ralph would take me to Taunton, where the shops were better than in Minehead, and he would buy me a ring.

  The Duggans’ boatyard was familiar to me. Father used to take us all to Minehead once in a while. We would have an overnight stay at an inn, and at some point during the visit we usually called on the Duggans. Josiah wasn’t always there, but we would take tea with Bronwen, in their tall house just beside the yard. To my life’s end, I will remember that mingling of hammering from the yard with the cry of the seagulls that whirled and called overhead, and the smell of seaweed from the harbour.

  Minehead was small but it was growing. It wouldn’t be long before it did have shops to rival Taunton’s, and when the tide was out, it had beautiful sands where, as a little girl, I sometimes enjoyed a scamper.

  There was plenty of room for scampering, for the Bristol Channel tides went out a long way; at their lowest point, getting to the edge of the sea felt like setting out to walk to Wales. The town was overlooked by a towering headland called North Hill, and the boatyard lay just below it, between the foot of the hill and the harbour, which had a curving quay like a beckoning forefinger, and offered a protected mooring place for the fishing fleet that plied out of it.

  In those days, we always rode, sometimes taking the route down the Avill valley, through the villages of Wheddon Cross, Timberscombe and Dunster and then turning south-west for the last two miles to go through little Alcombe hamlet just outside Minehead. On other occasions, given pleasant weather, we took a track that went over Grabbist, the hill overlooking Dunster, and led down into Alcombe. But when I went to make my stay with the Duggans, things were different. Mother and I went to Porlock in the trap with my trunk and we met the Duggans there: Josiah, Ralph and Bronwen.

  ‘So here we are,’ Bronwen said. ‘To welcome my future daughter-in-law. I’m glad the weather’s calm. I’m no sailor.’

  ‘It’s too calm!’ said her husband. ‘Sailing to Porlock with hardly enough wind to tack against took half a century and it won’t be much better going back even with the wind behind us. We started at dawn!’

  Ralph and I took little notice of all this. We were embracing. We hadn’t seen each other for a month.

  I said goodbye to Mother at Porlock and she cried a bit, even though I’d be coming home again in July. The journey to Minehead by sea was all new to me and I sat in the Bucket, looking about me, fascinated. Across the channel, Wales was visible, rather too clearly, as too much clarity probably meant rain before long. I had seen views across the channel often enough before, however; what I watched with so much interest was the coast of Somerset sliding by, the towering cliffs with the surf breaking on the rocks below, the clouds of seabirds that had nests on the ledges, and the dark, inaccessible cave-mouths here and there.

  We heard the sound of hammering even before we were properly round the end of the quay. ‘We’re busy,’ Josiah told me, ‘now that we’re at war with France. We have space enough to assemble small warships. I trained, and Ralph here did the same, in big shipyards up north. This very week, I’ve landed orders for two brig sloops to help fight Napoleon off if he gets any ideas. They’ll be valuable, in a war. Small, swift vessels, they’re to be – that can sting like wasps and get out of the way fast.’

  I nodded. We got the news regularly in Exford. After his sermon, the vicar usually told us something about events in the world outside. I knew quite a lot about Napoleon Bonaparte.

  According to the vicar, Napoleon was a Corsican who had risen to prominence during the Revolution that had shaken France so horribly eleven years ago, and now called himself First Consul of France, and clearly had ambitions to become a man of power. He didn’t seem to like Britain. He had lately been to Egypt, where he had tried to form an alliance with a potentate with the object apparently of interfering with England’s trade route to India.

  Having failed in this attempt, he had come home to turn himself into this First Consul,
whatever that might be, and promptly led an army through the Alps to Italy, where an area formerly under French control had lately been seized by Austria. He was determined to get it back and by the sound of it, was succeeding.

  ‘There’s trouble coming and it’s not too far away,’ Josiah Duggan remarked as he secured the Bucket to her mooring. ‘That man’s had his eye on England since he set off for Egypt with harming our trade in mind. He means business. Pity an asp didn’t get him.’

  ‘What’s an asp?’ Ralph enquired, as he helped me out of the boat on to the foot of some steep stone steps.

  ‘It’s a poisonous snake,’ I said. ‘Mr Silcox, my schoolteacher, told us about it. Cleopatra used one to kill herself, when she knew she and Antony had been defeated, and she’d be taken to Rome and made to march in a Triumph, and maybe executed.’

  ‘There, Ralph. There’s more to education than how to lay a keel, as I’ve told you often enough before,’ said Bronwen, laughing.

  ‘Not fair,’ said Ralph. ‘I’ve had an education too. Careful of those steps, my love. Tide’s going down and it’s left some slippery weed on them. My schoolmaster did tell us about Cleopatra and said that she killed herself; he just didn’t say how. Sounds nasty. A snake! Ugh! Give me your hand, Peggy. I’ll see you don’t slip.’

  The Duggans’ house was completely different from Foxwell’s farmhouse. Foxwell was long, low and rambling, though very strongly built, with walls that in places were three feet thick, stout stairs and beams of solid oak. The oak, said to have come from ancient ships, had been hardened in sea water to the strength of steel. By contrast, the Duggans’ house was tall and narrow, with four storeys as well as a cellar, which had steps down from the kitchen, and an outside hatch as well, leading to a chute. It had a slightly rickety air. The stairs were narrow; the timber of doors and window frames creaked loudly in every gale.

  It had a lovely parlour, though. I had always enjoyed taking tea there. Our parlour was frankly uninspiring and rarely used but Bronwen’s furniture was always polished, and there was a tall clock with a deep tick, bright covers for its comfortable array of chairs and sofas, and pretty ornaments on the mantelpiece – two silver candlesticks, a little horse in white china, and a silver snuffbox with a lid patterned in silver and red enamel. Bronwen called it cloisonné-work.

  None of the Duggans used snuff but she had bought this, she said, because she liked it. The house had a small flower garden behind it and Bronwen kept vases of flowers about the house, something else that didn’t appear at Foxwell.

  One thing that I did find difficult to get used to, though, was the noise. The adjacent boatyard was never quiet during the day, except on Sundays. There was always that sound of hammering and sawing and men calling to each other. I would have to accustom myself, I supposed, and wondered how long this would take.

  At supper on my first evening there, I learned a few more things about the family I now expected to join. There were three maidservants but they did not live in. They were the daughters of fishermen from the cottages by the quay and slept at home. I realized later that this was deliberately planned.

  Philip was there but soon would not be. For the moment, he was helping in the boatyard, but was candid about the fact that he didn’t like the work, was happy for Ralph to be its heir, and intended very shortly to join his Great-Uncle Stephen, who had a farm, Standing Stone, out on the moor, and begin learning the work of agriculture.

  I knew of Standing Stone, which was not so far from Foxwell, but I had never been there. It was a hill farm, perched high, which on Exmoor was apt to mean thin soil and poor productiveness, and on a ridge behind its farmhouse there was one of the single standing stones that are found here and there on the moor, set there by some long-ago people for reasons now unknown. It was eight feet high, with a slight list towards the south. Mr Silcox had once told his class that it might well have been a primitive signpost used by those long-departed peoples.

  That was all I knew about it. I had never seen Stephen Duggan and all I knew of him was that he was in late middle age, and was reclusive. He didn’t attend the gatherings that drew people together from neighbouring farms, to celebrate weddings or christenings or Christmas, or to show their respects at funerals. He worked the land with a few farmhands, who did his marketing for him. They turned up now and then at inns in various villages and if at Foxwell we ever had any news of Mr Duggan of Standing Stone, it came through them. There hardly ever was any news, anyway. But I now learned that once in a while, Josiah Duggan and Philip would visit him, and that Philip intended to join him there this year.

  In my first week with the Duggans, I accompanied Josiah and Philip on one of their visits. ‘You’d best get to know your prospective new relatives,’ Josiah said jovially. We were quite pleasantly greeted; Stephen Duggan had help in the house from some of his farm workers’ wives, and we were entertained to a good dinner. He looked very elderly, being mostly bald, with gaps in his brownish teeth and a beard in which grey and brown hairs were mingled. He smiled amiably enough though not prettily, owing to the teeth.

  On the ride home, Philip and his father revealed to me things concerning Standing Stone, that I hadn’t known before.

  ‘That Laurence Wheelwright, that’s after my Maisie, worked there once,’ Philip said. ‘It’s just as well he moved on to that place near Timberscome. I couldn’t go to Standing Stone if he was there.’

  ‘Thank heaven for that,’ Josiah said. ‘If you’re set on farming, Philip, Standing Stone could turn out to be a good thing for you, since Great-Uncle Stephen happens to be a childless widower. My poor uncle had no luck with his children. None of them lived past twenty. It’s a cruel world sometimes. Anyhow, I hope the end will be that you’re provided for, Philip. Not what I’d choose myself, but if you really want to plod about before dawn, in the mud, milking cows, that’s your business. Though we could do with an extra pair of hands in the boatyard now there’s all this extra work to be done, building vessels for war. If you were to change your mind, now …’

  ‘You can hire better hands than mine for the work and as for milking cows and mud, that’s no worse than sailing all night and getting wet through when it’s rough and the sea’s crashing aboard, and it’s no worse either than risks with the law,’ said Philip, somewhat sullenly.

  Josiah, though, seemed unable to resist making a dig or two at this strange son of his who preferred milking cows to laying keels and free trading. ‘I’d like to feel you really are provided for, Phil, as I fancy you’ll want to get wed before long. How near are you and Maisie now to settling things?’

  ‘Not yet. Not quite,’ said Philip and his face became even more sullen, though he made himself brighten it and added: ‘I think she’s a bit too young, not eighteen till autumn. Best let it be for a while.’

  ‘She’s a flighty piece,’ said his father candidly. ‘I’ve heard she’s still being seen around with Laurence Wheelwright.’

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ snapped Philip.

  ‘Two days back, your mother met Mrs Spears that Maisie works for at that Avill place near Dunster. According to her, Laurence collected Maisie on her afternoon out last week.’

  ‘What! She told me she couldn’t meet me last week because she was visiting her parents!’ Philip almost shouted it.

  ‘Let be, let be.’ Josiah, having troubled the waters himself, now strove to pour oil on them. ‘The girl’s young, like you say. It’s a pity Standing Stone isn’t nearer to Dunster, though.’

  ‘I’ll see Maisie soon,’ said Philip, quite menacingly. ‘And I’ll have a word or two to say to her!’

  ‘Careful! Don’t make the girl resent you,’ said Josiah. ‘Make her think you’re better company than that Laurence. Now, here’s a nice stretch of track. Let’s get a move on, and canter.’

  As time went on, I learned the ways of the house, the times of meals, the ins and outs of the kitchen, the kind of food preferred and how it was prepared. Friends came to dine now and the
n. I particularly liked Harriet and Edmund Baker, a brother and sister who lodged in a fisher family’s cottage quite nearby. Harriet taught in a small school in Minehead while Edmund was a curate working at St Michael’s Church, up on the side of North Hill. They were such a frank and open pair. Edmund was a pleasant-looking young man, but Harriet was almost a beauty, shapely, graceful in her movements, neither too short nor too tall, with lovely chestnut hair and eyes to match. She also had the good complexion so typical of our west country, where the damp air is kind to our skins. Ralph warned me, though, never to mention free trading when the household had outside company. ‘One never knows, and though he’s never said so, I don’t think Edmund cares for our – other way of earning a living. In that case, Harriet may not care for it, either.’

  I noticed also that there was something that Mr and Mrs Duggan didn’t care for, and that was leaving me and Ralph alone together. Perhaps they were wise, since whenever we did have a few private minutes, we were apt to slide into each other’s arms. However, they did once or twice let Ralph take me out for a sail in the Bucket. Whichever of them saw us off always said, Mind you behave yourself, Ralph. Ralph taught me how to row a gig out to the Bucket when she was anchored in the midst of the harbour, and I learned a little, too, about managing her sails.

  He took me out into the channel and he told me the names of the two islands that jutted from the water to the north-east. Flatholm was, appropriately, the flatter one, Steepholm the one that rose from the sea like the back of a gigantic whale. On another of these expeditions, we went along the coast, right back to Porlock, and he pointed out the remains of an old landslide from the cliffs, which had blocked what he said had once been a most useful path for free traders, since it slanted up, right to the top of a cliff, from a cave which was above sea-level and at low tide had a small sandy cove below it. ‘Until – before I was born, it was – a chunk fell off the cliff in a storm and dumped a great big boulder on the path and made it useless!’ said Ralph.