Late Harvest

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘I was sorry for ’ee when I heard things were broken off with Ralph Duggan, for it was plain enough ’ee didn’t want them broken. But they are, and he’s far away and not likely to be back any time soon. So your mother says. Is she wrong?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But I said I’ll wait and …’

  ‘Wait for what? What if he never comes back? Folk often don’t, when they go abroad and make new lives in foreign places. I’m here, and ready to marry you tomorrow if only you’d say yes. I’m healthy and my mother always said I was good-natured; I’ll do right by ’ee.’

  ‘And you’ll come and live at Foxwell. You’ll gain Foxwell into the bargain, one day,’ I said cruelly.

  James was unconcerned. ‘Yes, and why not? Got to be practical, in this old world. It’s that or the army, fighting the French, but I’d as soon not be sticking bayonets into other men or firing cannonballs at them. I’d sooner plough and sow and reap the corn to feed folk. Yes, Foxwell’s my opportunity, but I wouldn’t want it if I didn’t like ’ee so well. I wouldn’t wed a girl I couldn’t care for, even for a farm of my own.’

  ‘What if the girl doesn’t care for you?’ I sounded harsh. It was because I was afraid of myself. Inside me, something was giving way. Hope was fading and worse still, so was the memory of Ralph. He was no longer as real to me as he had been. It wasn’t as easy as it used to be, to conjure him up in my mind’s eye. Reality was the hot sun and the hay that threw off pollen that dried the throat and made one sneeze, and the sound, somewhere, of a cuckoo calling and this sunburned young man sitting in front of me and talking, his voice low and warm and full of the familiar local accent.

  ‘You’ll care, given time,’ he said. ‘It’ll come natural. You’ll see.’

  I shook my head. I said I was sorry, but no, no, it would never do, Ralph was different; Ralph was special. I was grateful for the compliment and I understood that James had paid me a great honour but I loved Ralph and always would.

  ‘And ’ee’ll die an old maid for ’un?’ asked James, looking infuriatingly amused.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I sprang up and ran away. He didn’t pursue me, but I heard him laugh.

  The year went on. James’ brother John got married, to a girl called Becky Stannawood, whose parents kept a haberdashery in Exford. Mother and I attended the wedding, in St Salwyn’s church. The bride wore a beautiful dress of silk, pinky foxglove colour. It was much admired, and at the reception, in the back room of the haberdashery, there was much laughter and joking and people saying to me, When will it be your turn, Peggy? Don’t leave it too long, now! I smiled in answer and said things like, Well, I’ll have to see. I’m still only twenty-one. And got back disconcerting answers such as, Time goes quicker than you know, maid.

  And I admit it, I did feel envious of Becky, in her foxglove silk with its flounces and embroidery, cosily cocooned in the approval of both families, I wished it could be me, beautifully dressed, standing beside Ralph … going home that night with Ralph, to be united with him in the secret consummation of our vows.

  Harvest time came and we held a harvest supper at Foxwell. There was dancing in the evening, outside at first, until clouds swept over the moon and it started to rain. I ran for shelter in the house, but was caught by James and pulled aside into a barn. I found myself being firmly and efficiently kissed, and I heard James say: ‘Come on, Peggy. Isn’t it time you made your mind up? You’re keeping me on edge and I’m losing my patience. There are other girls in the world – only I’d rather I had you.’

  I made one last feeble attempt to resist. ‘And you’d rather you had Foxwell too?’

  ‘Yes. Why not? I’ve a life to live and with you alongside, I can make something of Foxwell. Give me an answer, Peggy. Now. Yes or no?’

  The rain rattled on the roof of the barn. The place felt cold, but James’s arms were warm. I found myself leaning against him. I still loved Ralph; for a moment, my memory of him regained its old clarity. I saw his unhappy face when we were quarrelling. But I was tired, so tired, of holding on. My last lingering hopes had been wearing away, bit by bit, for a long time now. There was a wrenching, tearing moment, a feeling in the pit of my stomach that was not physical but felt as though it was, felt like pain. Then I turned away from Ralph, dragged myself free of him and said yes to James.

  Before the wedding, I put Ralph’s pearl engagement ring in a little box that had once held a brooch, a Christmas gift from my father. Then I went to my hiding place in the barn wall and put the box in with the money. It would always be there. I would not forget it. But I would not look at it again.

  One month later, I stood before the altar at St Salwyns’s, and Margaret Hannah Shawe said I will to James and became Mrs James Bright.

  Weregild

  ‘If my rheumatics get much worse,’ my mother grumbled, ‘I’ll not be able to get out of this old chair once I’m sat in it.’ She eased a cushion into a more comfortable position behind her and settled back into the basket chair that had once been my father’s. ‘Pour me a brandy, will ’ee, Peggy. No good asking you to share it, I suppose, James. Ah well, you’re a good lad mostly, if only ’ee weren’t so prim as a young lady’s governess about free trading.’

  ‘I never interfere with your private business,’ said James. ‘As my mother-in-law, I respect you too much for that. But you know my feelings. That brandy comes from France and bringing it in without paying duty on it is not lawful. What’s more, just now, it puts money in Boney’s pocket as well, and now we’re at war with him, that won’t do. The government’s going all-out to put a stop to it and no wonder. That Revenue cutter the Shark, she’s swallowed a good few contraband-runners and she’ll swallow more afore she’s done. And quite right too. There won’t be much more cheap brandy or silk for anyone.’

  ‘I laid in some silk cloth and a good lot of brandy and wine when I saw the beacons being built on Dunkery and Selworthy,’ said Mother. ‘Liquor keeps my old bones warm, so it does.’

  Since my marriage, she had taken to drinking a good deal on most evenings. ‘I can please myself now ’ee’s wed and not my responsibility,’ she said to me once when I queried the amount she was consuming. She now gave James a grin from which he visibly recoiled. She had lost several teeth of late and the grin was positively witchlike.

  ‘I’ve enough to last a good few years,’ she said. ‘And if ’ee don’t want any of my nice drinks, James, my stock’ll last the longer. Can’t ’ee keep those children quieter, Peggy? Look at Will, there, banging ’un’s spoon on the table for more. He’s had his supper! Either give ’un more or take ’un out. And there’s Rose howling – this here place is Bedlam sometimes! You never made such a din as I remember. Wish ’ee’d made another boy instead of Rose. We need sons in this family.’

  ‘I didn’t have any say in the matter,’ I pointed out.

  ‘And I wanted a daughter. That’s a good family, that is, one boy and one girl,’ James said, backing me up. I gave him a smile.

  It was February 1805. We had been married, by then, for a little over three years. Our son, William, was now two and his sister, Rose, was nearly a year old. My married life was working. James had been a cautious and careful bridegroom and if my introduction to married life had been without excitement, it was also without pain, and I had my children easily. William, four weeks early, was tiny. For some reason, no more had followed but William and Rose were both healthy and there was plenty of time, James said unconcernedly.

  I got on well enough with James. He worked hard and expected me to work hard too, but he was also careful of me. It was from James that I acquired the habit, when walking or riding out alone, of always taking a knife with me. Having a knife had once saved his life, he said. He had been cutting back some undergrowth near a river and he had slipped and fallen into the water, catching his left foot in a tangle of brambles.

  ‘I were slidin’ backwards and couldn’t lift myself anyways,’ he said. ‘I could reach my foot, just, but not u
ntangle it. Only I had my good sharp knife on my belt, so I got that out and I could just about stretch far enough to do some slashing. So slash I did and the foot came free and I ended up in the river and got mighty wet, but I didn’t drown. You never know. Things happen.’

  I took his advice and barely a week later, when out on the moor, gathering whortleberries, I found one of our sheep caught in a gorse patch, trapped by its thick wool. I had encountered this sort of thing before, more than once, and scratched my hands and arms badly while releasing the animals. With a knife, the task was much easier. The same thing happened again about a year later. James was a careful farmer and a careful husband and if what I felt for him wasn’t love, it was respect and in due course, affection.

  We argued sometimes, but not often, not after the time when I disagreed with him over which field to plant next year’s wheat in, and he reminded me, very forcibly, that one day the farm would be his. It would never be mine, even if Mother were to will it to me. Whatever a wife earned or inherited belonged automatically to her husband and I shouldn’t forget it. I was angry, saying that I would expect a say in decisions all the same, and he slapped me. That was when I began learning to be a little wary of James.

  But he was essentially kind and wanted to please me. He had let me choose the name Rose for our pretty baby daughter, even though he would have preferred something more workaday. I was grateful for that.

  It was shortly after that conversation about my mother’s supplies of drink, and the government’s determination to stop free trading, that my mother’s strength began to fail. The stiff joints she had complained about suddenly grew stiffer and she became breathless after climbing the stairs. Her skin developed an odd orange flush, not the healthy pink of her former outdoor life. A week after that little spat with James about free trading, she suddenly died.

  She was in the dairy at the time, trying to help Mrs Page to churn butter, in our West Country way, rolling the butter churn back and forth between them, in a sling, rather than spinning it by a handle as I have since learned is the manner of it elsewhere. She said she could manage as long as she could sit down, and we put a chair in the dairy for her.

  Suddenly Mrs Page cried out my name and brought me running from the kitchen, to find my mother lying on the floor while stout Mrs Page stood by looking terrified and begging her to speak. I knelt down beside her in alarm, and then understood that she was dead.

  Foxwell seemed strange now that I was alone there with James and our children. The farm was prospering in his care, but he was very careful with money and we didn’t have as many hands as we really needed. Betty had left us to marry, and pale little Annie, who replaced her, was a fifteen-year-old waif from an orphanage in Taunton, which to James meant that he could pay her much less than Betty had ever been paid. As a result, I worked harder than ever and rarely left our land. I heard little of the Duggans, except an occasional snippet from Mr Silcox who had formed the habit of occasionally riding out to dine with us. From him we heard that in Minehead, Josiah Duggan had cut back on his free trading, partly because of the dangerous Revenue cutter the Shark, but partly, said Mr Silcox, because he didn’t care to swell Napoleon Bonaparte’s coffers. James and Josiah were in agreement there, I thought.

  When I heard these occasional mentions of the Duggans, I tried to give no sign, but always, something moved in the pit of my stomach. Something I could not control; something that I did not think would ever die away. I took care not to let it show.

  1805 passed and 1806 set in. As William approached the age of four, he put on a spurt of growth. He became quite useful at small tasks round the farm. At supper one evening, James commented on it, with approval.

  ‘He’s interested in the sheep. Before long I’ll get him a puppy of his own to train. Boy and dog’ll grow into shepherding side by side. Though he’ll need some schooling. I know you set store by schooling, Peggy, and that’s right enough. I’ve often been glad of my own. When he’s a bit older, he can go to Mr Silcox’s school, same as we did. And Rose too, later on. I’ve actually talked to Mr Silcox about them – I saw him when I went to Exford today. Met him in the White Horse Inn – he were having a pint of cider. I’ve asked him to dinner tomorrow as there’s something he wants to talk about. He’s takin’ on an assistant so as he can retire in a year or two, it seems. He’s already thinkin’ about our William there. Collectin’ pupils in advance so as his replacement’ll have a good full classroom to start him off.’

  I had just finished giving Rose her supper. I leant back in my chair, feeling her relax sleepily against my shoulder. Times were changing, I thought. Bert Page had died just after the previous Christmas, and Mrs Page seemed to age overnight, going suddenly from stout but brisk middle age to a hobbling crone, and then she had left us to live with a married daughter in South Molton on the other side of the moor. We had had to find replacements for the Pages. Fred Webster was a large, quiet, good-natured man in his thirties, with a large, quiet, good-natured wife called Mattie, about the same age, and three children so far, though they said candidly that they hoped for more. James had a sharp tongue at times but none of them seemed to be in the least impressed by it. Fred would listen when James berated him, say: ‘As you wish, zur,’ and tug his forelock and then go on imperturbably doing whatever he’d been doing before.

  This irritated James at times, but on the other hand, Fred was competent. He was very good with our Red Devon bull. Mr Francis Quartly of South Molton had finally relented and let us invest in one of his fine young bulls but though a splendid sire, Foxwell Sandy had an unreliable temperament. We were glad to have Fred’s help in managing him, and I was certainly pleased with Mattie’s assistance in the house. She was a good cook and skilled in the dairy, too.

  I sat there, patting Rose’s back, and looking into the fire and thought: well, this was life. Changes were bound to come. Mine was not the life I had chosen but Ralph was far away, and I was turning into a typical placid farmer’s wife and careful mother, with my waistline not what it was and my dreams laid by.

  But not thrown away. No, never that, though only I knew it. And if I didn’t go to the market, the Websters brought back gossip. One of the things I had gleaned from them was that Ralph was still in Antigua.

  But one day, he might come home, said a renegade little voice within me. He might. If only I could see him again. Just once. That would be enough. It wouldn’t be wrong to wish for that, would it? Just to see him, to exchange a few words! Just to look on his face again and feed my hunger for him. To renew my memory of how he looked, the way his hair grew …

  Ralph.

  Aloud, I said: ‘William can’t very well go to school in Exford before he can sit a pony on his own.’

  ‘Ah. Ponies,’ said James. ‘All ours are gettin’ on in years. I’ve been a bit slack over this,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Exmoors can live a good few years past twenty but they don’t all. I should have picked out a couple of our foals two or three years ago. Nothing like a pony you’ve handled since it was six months old. You know them through and through and they know you. Well, at next autumn’s Pony Fair in Bampton, I’d better keep one or two of ours out of the sale and try to buy a couple of full-grown ones as well; there always are some. I just hope all ours last that long.’

  I had actually tried, once or twice, to remind James about the advancing need to replace our ponies, but he didn’t like it when, as he exasperatingly put it, I tried to make decisions concerning the farm. Foxwell was his, not mine. I said nothing.

  Everything was normal that evening. Except for my secret dreamings, the past was asleep.

  It woke up, abruptly, when Mr Silcox came next day to dine.

  I welcomed him, as usual, into the parlour. It was no longer dismal because when I took over the running of the house, I had remembered the polish and flowers and ornaments of Bronwen Duggan’s parlour and tried to recreate it at Foxwell.

  Flowers were not feasible, since we didn’t grow them and wild flowers
don’t last well in vases, but I had brought in some little ornaments, taken to polishing the furniture at least once a month and added colourful cushions and a mantelpiece clock with a pleasant tick. James let me keep some of the money I made from the butter and eggs that were my province more than his and I used that. These simple things had altered the whole atmosphere of the room from neglected to friendly.

  Mr Silcox’s grey horse had long since died, and he now had a placid brown mare, a plump-sided creature with a maternal air about her, as though she regarded her riders as children in her charge. James unsaddled her while I showed her owner into the parlour and offered him wine. I noticed as I did so, that he was growing visibly older, with new lines on his long-chinned face and a thinning of his silvery hair. He seemed active enough, however. He accepted some white wine, though I saw him glance doubtfully at the French label on the bottle. ‘My mother bought it before the war started,’ I said. ‘We wouldn’t want to trade with Boney’s country now.’

  ‘Quite. There’s not much free trading these days,’ said Mr Silcox. ‘And a good thing too, in my opinion. I never thought the government was right to put so much duty on so many things, but breaking the law is still to be deplored. Peggy, I want to talk to you about the future. And I’ve a piece of news, too, that I didn’t have when I saw James yesterday … Ah, here is James. Good.’

  Over the wine, Mr Silcox explained his plans. ‘I’m taking on an assistant. He used to be a curate at St Michael’s, but he’s taken to teaching. Edmund Baker, his name is.’

  ‘I remember him. He and his sister Harriet used to lodge by Minehead quay. They came to the Duggans’ house sometimes while I was staying there,’ I said.