Late Harvest

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  Overhead, a window opened and Mattie appeared, shaking a duster into the air and then, catching sight of me, shouted: ‘Thank the good Lord ’ee’s back, missus! Maybe you can settle this here racket! Place is turning into bedlam these days!’

  ‘And Jenny’s no help,’ said Fred, shaking Harry crossly, so that Harry’s yells grew louder. ‘Her don’t like babbies, she says. Looked after missus when she had to and knows what to do on account of coming from a big family, but now she says she hates it, all babbies do is bellow and get wet at both ends and she don’t want to know about Harry and as for Michael, she had enough of him while his ma was having him. Missus just ain’t got the strength … be quiet, you little savage!’

  ‘He won’t be quiet while you keep yanking his ear about like that,’ I said. ‘Here, give him to me. Come here, Harry. You’re not to chase the hens, Fred is quite right to be angry with you. Now, you come indoors …’

  ‘Don’t want to go in; want to play outside!’

  ‘Your ideas of playing shouldn’t involve the hens. Come along.’ I got him into the kitchen by gripping his arm, though it took a surprising amount of strength and I could well understand why Fred had preferred to haul him along by the ear. Charlotte, still looking horrified, had done as she was told, and gone upstairs, out of the way. In the kitchen, baby Michael was howling with abandon while Annie stooped over him, trying to spoon milk into his mouth. Susie was weeping wearily in the basket chair. Jenny was peeling potatoes and trying to look as though she wasn’t there.

  ‘What on earth’s going on?’ I demanded. ‘Sit down on that chair, Harry, and don’t you dare move, and stop that yelling at once. Annie …’

  ‘Missus b’ain’t got no milk!’ Annie mourned. ‘This here’s goat’s milk; Websters be keepin’ goats now, and their milk’s all right for most babbies if their mothers can’t feed ’un, but this little tyke Michael, he won’t have it and …’

  ‘Susie,’ I said, ‘take Michael into another room, or upstairs, somewhere quiet, anyway, and rock him – he might settle down then. Annie, warm some fresh goat’s milk if you have some and we’ll try it with some honey in it. Harry, be quiet!’

  I said it so fiercely that he actually stopped bawling. Annie glared at him. ‘He got the sulks when I said he’d had enough spoonfuls of my cake mixture. He’s had four and he’ll be sick if he has any more. He’s the greediest child I ever did see. He run out of the kitchen in a pet, and then Missus came in carrying Michael and said she’d been tryin’ again to feed ’un but her milk hadn’t come back – failed, it did, days ago now – and that’s why we’ve got goat’s milk here, only little Mike, he’ll hardly take it …’

  It was a good thirty miles to Foxwell from Taunton, possibly more. I had been travelling all day. I ached. I wanted a cup of tea and a rest, before changing my clothes and starting to arrange my belongings in my room, the one I had once shared with James, probably. I had expected to ease myself into the household by degrees, taking days about it. I had not expected to find myself taking instant charge of a crisis as though I were a sheepdog rounding up a flock of recalcitrant sheep.

  Susie crept out of the kitchen with Michael. His crying faded into the distance as she carried him upstairs. Annie stood looking with distaste at Harry. He was gulping miserably. His hair was tangled and his tears had made shiny streaks on his small face. He also looked pale. In fact, he was definitely tinged with green. The cake mixture, no doubt! Just in time, I snatched an empty bowl off the dresser and held it while he was sick. Jenny continued to peel potatoes with grim determination.

  ‘It’s a good thing I’m back,’ I said resignedly.

  William thought the same when he returned from the fields, and found the house moderately peaceful. ‘I’ve been coming home every day to a whole lot of noise,’ he said. ‘Now you’re here, perhaps life will be quieter.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said.

  In the succeeding weeks, I set about getting the household to run smoothly. I wasn’t needed in the dairy since both Susie and Jenny were good at dairy work, and I was past the age for plodding round the fields to spread muck or join in the haymaking. Also, Foxwell now had a good cowman, Samuel Andrews by name, who along with his wife Marian could attend to the milking. What I took over was managing the children and seeing that the housework and cooking were done properly. I went to Exford and called on the vicar to ask if he knew of a suitable wet-nurse. He did: there was a Mrs Bridget Bond who had just lost a new baby and would be willing to stay at Foxwell for a while to feed Michael. I installed Bridget the same day.

  The vicar also recommended a Sarah Jones, a childless widow, to help in the house. Sarah was about forty-five, a hefty, strapping woman who could scrub floors, carry buckets of water and beat rugs superbly.

  Though she couldn’t cook. We tried her at that but soon gave up. You could have shot rabbits dead with Sarah’s bullet-hard potatoes while her pastry lay on the stomach like leaden weights and her cakes always sank in the middle. Her late husband had died of some mysterious internal complaint but William insisted (out of Sarah’s hearing) that it must have been indigestion. However, her muscles and her tirelessness made up for everything. With Sarah to help us, life in the house became reasonably normal once more. Except, of course for Harry’s too-frequent tantrums and outbursts of mischief, which his mother seemed unable to deal with.

  Susie and I got along well. It wasn’t Susie’s fault that she was not strong, and not her fault that her attempts at childbearing had damaged her in some way, so that it hurt her to move anything at all heavy or to stand for too long. She did what she could and was obviously grateful that she need not drive herself too hard. She took on the lighter tasks; feeding the poultry, sorting eggs, mending, and chopping vegetables. I didn’t think that the upset of the epidemic was responsible for Harry’s maddening behaviour. Mattie Webster told me that he had been much the same before that. ‘Only ’un’s growin’ every day and as he grows, he gets cleverer at bein’ a pest,’ said Mattie.

  The summer wore away. In August and September, the moor was at its most splendid, for the heather was out and the gorse was at its best and the hills were mantled royally in purple and gold, and the kings of the moor, the red stags, were now in full antler and beginning to roar their challenges. In Taunton, I had known that I had missed the moor and its changing seasons but only now was I fully realising just how much I had missed them. I was so very glad to be home – if only home were a little less prone to disruption from Harry.

  His talent for mischief was alarming, for it was often dangerous, like the time he attempted to ride our Red Devon bull (but was fortunately thrown and landed in a gorse bush, which I considered served him right, though Susie wept over his scratches). It was beyond me to control him, just as it was beyond Susie. He needed constant supervision which we had no time to give him. I made up my mind and Susie was wise enough to listen to me. Harry must go to school as soon as he turned five.

  Edmund Baker still ran the school in Exford and Charlotte was already studying with him. She had drooped for a while after our final return to Foxwell, and had been obviously homesick, but she was happier now that she was attending school, which got her away from the farm. She didn’t like the highly physical farm life; she would rather read a book than weed the vegetable garden, any day, and she recoiled with loathing from spreading muck. Edmund sent us good reports of her work and once, confidentially, told me that she was a very intelligent child and would I consider letting her become a pupil teacher.

  ‘It would be a future for her,’ said Mr Baker. ‘She’s not a natural-born farm girl. She still misses Taunton,’ he added. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘Yes, but I can do nothing about it,’ I said. ‘Your idea sounds practical, though, and yes, it would get her away from the farming world. Well, there’s plenty of time to decide. I shall talk to her and see what she thinks.’

  It was as well, I thought, that Mr Baker was so pleased with Charlotte, because he wasn�
��t likely to be pleased with Harry.

  The school was much as it always had been. Edmund and Mr Silcox – I always addressed my former schoolmaster as Mr Silcox, even though he had asked me to call him Arthur – were still sharing their home and though Mr Silcox was now not far short of eighty, he was remarkably brisk. He even took a class now and then, though for the most part, Edmund ran the little school with the help of one woman teacher, Miss Pearce. Miss Pearce was a spinster of about my age, a vicar’s daughter, as Harriet had been.

  She taught the youngest children of both sexes, instructing them in reading, writing and simple arithmetic, and took the older girls for needlework, for more advanced reading, handwriting and arithmetic.

  When I met her, I thought she had a kind, tired face; as though she had known much disappointment but had managed not to become bitter. She had probably longed for marriage and her own children, and failed to achieve them. She was not ugly, but nor was she good-looking, which was probably the reason. Some men, I said to myself, could be singularly dim-witted. Instead of the pleasant, housewifely life for which I thought nature had intended her, she was going to be saddled with Harry next May. As a beginner, he would be in her class.

  She and Edmund Baker eventually tamed Harry, though not without a tussle. We had news of the process from Mr Silcox and Edmund when they visited us. Mr Silcox said that although he had always been opposed to caning the pupils, Harry had at first been so ill-behaved that he had given Edmund permission to do so if it really seemed necessary.

  ‘And it has been, three or four times,’ said Edmund Baker grimly.

  Remembering the horrible Waters household, I felt troubled, but Edmund had nothing brutal in his nature and Harry didn’t seem any the worse. Gradually, indeed, he began to improve. Edmund Baker’s methods seemed to be doing more good than harm.

  Edmund had not married but seemed happy about it. He was middle-aged himself by now and his long proximity to Mr Silcox had made him begin to look vaguely similar. Mr Silcox remarked on it himself, and told me that there was even speculation in the village that Edmund was his son. ‘It amuses us,’ he said. ‘There’s a nice tolerant streak in the people of the moor.’

  I had noticed that myself. I had feared at first that I would be cold-shouldered. Everyone for miles must know why I had parted from James. But the years seemed to have eroded any bad feeling, even at Marsh, for William had kept them well informed and they knew I had come home to nurse James. Besides, it was likely that everyone for miles, including the inhabitants of Exford and Porlock, knew perfectly well that part of the quarrel between me and James was the fact that I had gone out at night to warn smugglers of a Revenue trap. At that time, at least half the population had been ready customers for cheap brandy and tobacco. No one had fallen out with James, but I had the impression that under the surface, there had been sympathy for me. The existence of Charlotte no doubt caused some tut-tutting, but even James’ brother at Marsh Farm offered me no rudeness.

  Free trading had more or less stopped, I learned. Ralph Duggan had withdrawn from it again, saying that it was no longer profitable. The Hathertons had persisted, and after only one year, they were caught. Both Luke and Roger had been sent as convicts to Australia. I was so very thankful that Ralph had backed out in time.

  But I never saw Ralph, or tried to, and I rarely heard news of him. Nor did I hear much news of Rose. She and her husband had cut themselves off from me. William saw them now and then, and two years after I had rejoined the Foxwell household, William returned from a visit to his sister in a state of high irritation and expressed himself forcefully.

  ‘Henry Hannaford,’ William said, ‘is a pompous fool and a po-faced killjoy. Likes to stand in front of the fire on a cold day with un’s feet apart, keeping all the warmth for hisself, while he lays down the law about everything under the sun to anyone else who chances to be in the room. Takes a grave view, he does, of these modern novels that are becoming so popular. Frivolous, he calls them, and morally unhealthy. He’s ordered Rose not to read them. And he’s so particular about observing Sundays. Their little daughters – Mary’s just four and Ellie only two – they’re not allowed to play with their toys on a Sunday! What do you think of that?’

  ‘What does Rose think of it?’ I asked.

  ‘Rose does as she’s told, not that she seems to mind!’ said William with an outraged snort. I felt sorry for the daughters.

  Since James was gone, there was no difficulty about receiving Charlotte’s allowance from Ralph or the rent from Standing Stone. I wrote once more to Ralph, asking if he wished to continue the existing arrangements, or wanted to end them, since I was well provided for. A brief reply came which said that no, he didn’t; I should have money for Charlotte until she was married, while Standing Stone was lawfully mine and so was its rent.

  I told William about it all and he merely said: ‘So you own Standing Stone! Well, splendid. Ralph Duggan is a good fellow, whatever the Revenue may think. But if Standing Stone belongs to you, shouldn’t we start keeping an eye on it? We have a responsibility there now.’

  In due course, therefore, I informed its tenants that I was now their landlord, and I went with William to inspect the place from time to time to make sure it was being farmed as it should. It was interesting, for I had scarcely ever been on its land before. On my first visit, I made a point of climbing the heathery moorland slope to look closely at the stone that gave the farm its name.

  It was a strange thing, grey granite, about eight feet high, slanting a little, with moss on its east side, where it was sheltered from the prevailing west wind. It had an air of mystery about it, for no one knew who had put it there or why, though it was said to have been there for thousands of years. I liked it. I am glad that from the eastern windows of the farmhouse, it is easy to see. I can’t climb the heathery moorland slope these days.

  Back then, neither William nor I felt that the tenants, a couple called Darracott, were running the farm as well as they should. We found ourselves having to chivvy them sometimes. Their foreman, Dickie Webster, did his best to keep things running smoothly, but complained that Mr Darracott rarely listened to him and was forever countermanding Dickie’s orders. ‘I’m allus glad to see ’ee here,’ he said to us. ‘Sometimes, he does listen to you.’

  In the course of those first two years, I had twice seen my younger son John, who would arrive without warning, whenever he could, though it didn’t happen often. He was an able seaman on a ship called the Eleanor Browne – named after the owner’s wife, apparently – and was for ever on the move, mostly round the coasts of Britain but sometimes sailing to foreign parts, going wherever a cargo was to be delivered. She would carry pine logs on one trip, ironware and coal on another, bales of cloth and raw wool on another, kegs of (legally imported) brandy and wine on the next. Her calls to her home port of Minehead were erratic.

  John’s visits were always immensely welcome. If he had ever had any hard feelings about me, they were gone now. He was independent, out in a world where people did far worse things than I had ever done. On his first visit home after my return, he had said to me, almost casually: ‘I’m glad to see you back here, Ma,’ and then never referred to my past again.

  He was a good raconteur, was my John, and every time he appeared, he had tales to tell us. One of the things that amused him in his seagoing life was the contrast, he said, between his captain, Captain Summers, and his brother-in-law Captain Grover of the Pretty Fairing, whose home port, like that of the Eleanor Browne, was Minehead.

  ‘They’re better friends than most real brothers,’ John said, ‘but not a bit alike! Their wives are twin sisters but the husbands couldn’t be less like twins if they’d planned it deliberately. Captain Summers is a burly, businesslike man, all for his work. I’ve never been in his cabin but I’ve passed it when the door is open and inside everything is plain as plain can be – narrow bed, table with charts and maps all over it, nothing ornamental. But Captain Grover, he’s tall an
d … elegant, that’s the only word for it.

  ‘The men marvel at it, you know, and sometimes talk about what fine furnishings Captain Grover has in his cabin, and once when the Eleanor and the Fairing chanced to be in port together, I was sent over to the Fairing with a message and I saw Captain Grover and got a glimpse through his cabin door and all the tales I’d heard were true. Captain Grover’s almost a dandy and he loves ornaments and novelties. His cabin has lots of pictures and a fine rug on the floor and ornaments on a shelf, stuck to it, I believe, so that they won’t come loose in a storm. Those two men are so different they might have come from different nations and yet they’re really attached to each other and when Captain Grover was ill, once, and Captain Summers heard of it, he was cast down for days until better news came when we got into the next port and there was a letter for him. Aren’t people strange?’

  That was John, and when in the January of 1830, after a stormy New Year’s Day, a spell of calm though frosty winter weather set in and John walked into the farmyard, carrying his usual pack, and calling out: ‘Anyone at home?’ Susie and I, who had been chopping vegetables and beating eggs in the kitchen, both rushed eagerly out to greet him.

  ‘John!’ I cried. ‘Are you ashore for long?’

  ‘I can stop for a week. The Eleanor needs a few repairs. Had an argument with floating wreckage from another ship, after that awful weather at New Year. She’s in Minehead harbour now, in the care of the Duggan shipyard. Lord, what a voyage we’ve had! Just as we were beating up past Cornwall, before the weather turned stormy, we nearly fell victim to wreckers …’

  ‘Wreckers!’

  ‘Aye,’ said John, and his young face suddenly became grim. Susie said: ‘This is going to be quite a tale, for sure. Let’s get inside. Will ’ee take tea or cider or brandy, John?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to brandy,’ John said as he picked up his pack and accompanied us into the kitchen. ‘It is quite a tale and a miserable one. The Pretty Fairing – you’ve heard me speak of her – she’s been lost with all hands and it wasn’t the weather. Captain Grover’s dead. There’s been a deal of grief aboard the Eleanor, I can tell you.’