by S. C. Howe
‘What?’
‘The authorities told us to sling our hook,’ said Sykes.
‘Climb aboard,’ Joss said.
They clambered into the back of the cart and sat, deflating in a shower of straw fragments.
‘We saw you from a long way off–’ Tom began.
‘And you thought, that has to be the captain,’ said Barratt, leaning back with a luxury of relief against empty packing cases.
‘You’re welcome to stay on the farm,’ Tom said.
Barratt gave a shadow of a smile. ‘Thanks Fielder, but I have itchy feet at the moment.’
‘Where do you want to be dropped?’ Joss asked.
Barratt looked to Sykes. ‘At Low Habberley, if that’s on your way.’
‘Certainly is,’ said Tom.
They clopped along into the evening sun, Joss framing a list of questions, but the cart creaked too much, Jasper’s hooves resounded too loudly and the tack clattered, so they had to shout above the noise. Too soon, Sykes tapped on Tom’s back.
‘Let us down here, mate. Thanks.’
They got down clumsily in another shower of chaff.
Joss leaned down, looked at Barratt. ‘If you need a place, you know where we are. There’s always a place for you.’
Barratt gave a quick smile and looked away. ‘Thanks Deerman, but for now I need to keep moving.’
With that, he walked on. Tom hesitated, looked to Joss who shrugged.
‘I don’t know what else we can do,’ he said.
As the cart rumbled off, Barratt followed Sykes into a field and started walking along a thin track that ran through a ripening wheat crop. Barratt looked around. Away from the cultivated fields, it was an area of sandy knolls covered by mounds of broom and gorse, like the tiny encampments of an invading army.
‘Not too far now, said Sykes, more to himself than Barratt, for his legs and back were aching and he was steaming with heat under the load. The next minute they descended into a small valley bottom by a tiny path, like a gash in the scrub. The ground was sandier and full of rabbit holes.
‘A poacher’s paradise,’ Sykes said.
Barratt thought nothing of it until Sykes suddenly leapt forward and caught hold of a rabbit. There was a quick snap and the rabbit hung limply from his hands. Slinging it on top of his mattress nonchalantly, he walked on.
‘How the hell did you do that?’ Barratt protested.
Sykes looked round. ‘Practise,’ he said and winked.
They emerged into a meadow, bounded on one side by a pale sandstone cliff, which loomed out of the growing twilight. It was stranger land. A place of possibilities, of cliffs reaching back into tunnels and of ancient timbered buildings smothered in dog rose and guelder rose, a place not plotted in any map of memory.
‘Head for the middle cave,’ said Sykes. ‘It’s bigger and drier.’
‘You seem to know your way around, considering you say you’re not a native.’
‘Did I? Oh.’ They stepped over a stream. ‘That’s the Honey Brook,’ he explained. ‘Gives the area its name.’
Barratt looked down into the clear water washing over smooth grey and pink-toned pebbles. They reminded him of the opaque boiled sweets of his youth. They scrambled up a sandstone bank and into the entrance of the cave, greenish-grey in the exposed areas but a flesh colour in the interior. It was wide but not deep. On reaching it, Sykes untied the rope and let his load fall. Putting the brazier upright, he started searching for twigs, and returned minutes later with several thick branches, which he broke with surprising force.
‘Tomorrow I’ll get some coal with the money from the chair,’ he said. ‘There’s a merchant up the track.’
‘I need to get back to Kidderminster,’ said Barratt. ‘I want to try out the group I told you about.’
Sykes grinned. ‘More like you want to get to know that posh piece you were talking to.’
‘Her name is Alice.’
‘Oh…Well, you won’t catch me back in that place. I’m quite happy to give this area a try for a while.’ He looked around at the land below. ‘It’s teaming with food, this place.’
Barratt stared at him. ‘Who are you? Really?’
‘A wanderer,’ said Sykes. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not on the run or anything. I don’t want to fit in, not just now.’
Barratt nodded. Perhaps this restlessness was right. If they kept moving, perhaps the thing that seemed to be constantly straining for attention on the edges of thought, smothering sleep at night, might just be outpaced, outrun. Yet somehow, Barratt knew it wouldn’t work. Swallowing, he reached for his hip flask and took a long slug of the whisky. Sykes was crouching with his back to Barratt outside the cave. As he went over, Sykes made a movement to hide what he was doing, but it was too late. The carcass of the rabbit lay bloody in his hands, its skin separated from its flesh, leaving skeins of membrane in between. The smell was cloying. Leaning down the bank, Barratt vomited into the undergrowth.
The harvest came earlier than expected that year. For several weeks, the sun shone and the grains in their husks turned from a golden yellow, to a golden brown. Tom was tanned to his arms, chest, and face. Joss too, with the sun bleaching his fair hair to an even lighter blond, which, with his suntanned face, made him look devastatingly handsome, but, being Joss, he did not appear to be aware of that.
The harvest was taking longer to get in and was harder work than Tom had imagined. Their small arable acreage had made buying a reaper impracticable, so he and the Greeners were reaping by hand, and it was back-breaking work. Joss took care of feeding the chickens, making vast meals and becoming engrossed with potting up the strawberry suckers into separate small pots. He had read that leaving them attached to the parent plants until their roots had matured enough to grow independently was the best practice. He worked alone in the sun, except for Nico, lying upside down, lurcher-fashion, in partial shade. Several times Roger the mallard made running attacks on Joss’s ankles and pattered over to Nico to get a response, but neither took the slightest notice of him. Deflated, he waddled back to the rest of the ducks rootling around in the straw of the strawberry field. The older Greener child, a boy of 12, had been set to clean the pigs out and then the horse every day for an extra amount each week. Joss had seen the child staring at him, and could almost hear the unspoken question: Why aren’t you doing this? Once, when they had all gathered for a midday meal at the trestle table in the courtyard, Joss had explained what had happened to his back, and the damage to his foot and side. The boy had nodded, as though pleased to have an explanation. It was the first time that Joss had felt it necessary to explain himself, and he felt a flicker of resentment.
At the end of the harvest, Tom had divided the money, after keeping some aside for seed and new implements, and handed it over to the Greeners who were genuinely surprised at the sum of their wages. After they had gone home one evening, Tom sat down by Joss who was reading up on the planting of brassicas.
‘I suggest we plough up the pasture where the chickens are at the moment,’ Tom said. ‘And if we do that now, we can get a crop out of it in less than a year. It’ll stand us in good stead.’
‘For what?’ Joss asked; his voice flat and uninterested.
‘Well...making a real go of it.’ Tom’s voice deflated.
‘A crop of what?’
‘I thought perhaps more market garden-type crops. Those were a success.’
‘I don’t like ploughing up old pastures.’
Tom frowned. ‘It’s not old, Joss, it’s an outgrown, modern pasture. There’s only a few common grasses in the mix.’
Joss felt his expression tighten. His objection made him sound like an old maiden aunt, sentimental, unrealistic. He shrugged. ‘If it’s going to go over to market gardening, I’ll need your help with it. I can’t do it on my own.’
‘Well, that was the idea... Spend more time working together.’
Joss sat back in his chair and studied him. ‘Good. Because I’m sta
rting to feel like a spare part on this farm. A side-show.’
Tom stared back, clearly taken off-guard. Sitting down, he stared at the floor. ‘You do know that you’ve earned more with the market-gardening, than the rest, so far. So you’re quite the reverse.’
‘But I think you know what I mean,’ said Joss, eyeing Tom coolly. ‘We’re so busy these days we barely speak to each other. It’s not all about making money. Yes, we have to survive, but working till we drop isn’t the dream I had.’
Tom’s eyes widened and, for a second, there was panic in his expression. ‘I’m sorry Joss... It’s just that this farm has to work, for both of us. It’s got to be profitable.’ He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. ‘I know it’s been relentless the last few weeks–’
‘Yes, I’d noticed.’
‘But it will ease up and perhaps we can start discussing the plans for working together.’ There was an awful anxiety in his voice.
Joss felt himself give. ‘I suppose I hadn’t realised how much this back thing was going to stop me doing,’ he said quietly. ‘It comes to something when a twelve-year-old kid has to clean out the pigs and the horse because I’m too crippled up to do it.’
Tom pulled his chair over. ‘You’ve done your bit, Joss. You’ve got nothing to prove. Anyway, I hear the boy’s chuffed at having his own wage. Talks non-stop about it, so Joe tells me.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. What I’d suggest is that Joe Greener takes over the cereal production and the sheep maintenance, his wife takes over looking after the chickens, ducks and the pigs, and we concentrate on the market gardening side and look to expand at a pace you’re happy with. How does that strike you?’
‘Sounds much better.’
Tom pulled some of the agricultural information manuals down and together they started leafing through for the best crops to grow, starting in the autumn.
Over the last few days, Tom had looked over the farm and for the first time in his life, felt he had really achieved something. The place was well-cared for, the animals healthy and the fields were becoming ever more productive. The threatening voices and number games in his head had receded, only an occasional hard, criticising voice would whisper, ‘Just look at yourself, Fielder. Who do think you are?’ Then he would pile up more work, and fatigue would eventually banish the mockery. On that particular evening, he went out into the courtyard and noticed plants growing up between the cobbles. Pulling them up, he threw them to one side. Then he glanced at the flowerbed he had sown in the spring. The delicate blooms were engulfed with coarse, clutching barbs and burrs of rank weeds. But believing there would be time to clear it he turned away and walked back to the house.
Tom and Joss did work together, planning the market-gardening fields. They would use the fields closest to the house so Joss would not have to walk too far. Now he spent hours potting up seedlings, at first sitting outside in the gentle sunshine of September and, as the sun grew lower in the sky, in the wonderfully golden sunlight of October. Inevitably the days grew shorter, and each set of clouds came bulging up from the hills and valleys, swollen with more rain. Then the rain really set in and streamed down relentlessly, the autumn clouds engulfing the tops of the tallest trees like town fogs. The droplets falling to earth were like a countdown to winter. And through the misted glass of the glasshouses, Joss could be seen in outline attending to the seed trays, as though working some primeval botanic alchemy.
At this time and at odd moments, Tom thought that his first hopes of the farm were like the leaves that hung limply off mossy branches, yellowed and lifeless, and falling to earth in the gathering winds. Then he reminded himself the farm was doing well, they were becoming comfortable even, having enough money coming in to see to their needs easily. As the farm took on a momentarily bare appearance, after the leaves had dropped and the crop fields were ploughed, Tom thought of all that they had achieved. It was small-scale, but it was a start. They should expand.
An early winter chill took hold and with it, darkness gathered. But not even the worsening weather deterred Tom. When it was too cold to work effectively outside, he discussed plans about his idea for expanding the farm to Joss in the same hurried manner he used these days to discuss the farming rota. Joss agreed. It was easier to agree with Tom, as his plans for expansion were watertight and well-thought-out and Joss’s feeling that they should not be doing any more were logically unsound. Perhaps in time he would come round to Tom’s way of thinking and be glad he hadn’t squandered time in “lying around the place and doing nothing” as Roger Deerman had once said of their early days. Yet he knew deep down he was deceiving himself. He had hoped Tom would calm down after the harvest was in, but it was not so. On many mornings, Tom was out working before Joss was even awake. Joss had often woken to a chilly bedroom and his back had been in spasms with pain. Some mornings it took a few swings to get his legs out of bed and then he had manoeuvred his way down the stairs and out into the kitchen where he would stand, back against the range, getting warm to unlock himself. Often now Tom would come in at meal times and stand eating his food out of saucepans taken from the range, and had taken to leaving notes on the kitchen table: Remember to do [this or that] before you disappear into the glasshouses, or If you’re going into the village, pick up [this or that], will you? Tom had ploughed the meadow and pasture nearest the house, and had harrowed the ground in readiness for planting out the next of the market garden crops. The land had been manured and was in good heart. But even Tom had to admit it, the fields looked bleak, just brown, muddied expanses, and the farmhouse looked grey and almost lifeless with no plants finding succour against the stone. Oddly, ploughing the fields with Jasper (at his suggestion Joss didn’t lead the horse, that would be wasting time) had given his mind an unexpected, but transient peace. Only by clearing things out, by producing straight, clean furrows could the increasing images of the putrefaction at the front line, be pushed from his mind. Tangled copses, long grass and thickets hid terrors, lent a background to an imagination that could be truly horrifying. Thus, he was determined to scour out every bit of vegetation and leave only a bareness that was clean and simple and didn’t hold any threats. Yet now, as he looked at the blank landscape in the watery winter light, he knew it had been a temporary relief and the memories of the Front would still come crashing back into his memory.
Sykes peered up from skinning a rabbit at the front of the cave.
‘What d’you say her name was again?’
‘Alice.’ Barratt had told him a dozen times. It was Sykes’ way of being dismissive.
‘All right for some,’ Sykes said.
‘Well, if you took a bit more care over your appearance, instead of looking like a bloody wreck, you might have some success.’ Sykes shrugged. Barratt was frankly fed up with Sykes’ whinging. It had been going on for weeks.
Each morning Barratt left the cave after taking especial care with his clothes. He had taken to washing one set of everything each week on fine days, letting them dry in the trees and pressing his trousers and shirts under his mattress at night. This morning he was oiling his hair carefully in front of an old mirror.
‘Are you sure she hasn’t got any unattached friends?’ Sykes asked, as he always did.
‘She has plenty of friends.’
‘I’m not talking about those Pankhurst battle-axes.’
Barratt stopped polishing his teeth mid-flow and stared at him. ‘Are you suggesting Alice is like that.’ It was a threat, not a question.
‘No.’
‘Why don’t you come along to some of the meetings, join in.’
Sykes went back to skinning a rabbit. It was all right for Barratt; he had what they used to call ‘style’ in the trenches. He, however, had been one of life’s jokers, one of the lads who used to creep out of billets and impress the mademoiselles with his newly-acquired, pigeon French. They had giggled and flirted with him. Even before the war he had had little trouble in getting women; he had
been good-looking in a roguish sort of way, which he played to the gallery, putting on a hat or cap at a jaunty angle. Then the war came and its aftermath, and now he could hardly speak to women and, when he did, even the most innocuous comment seemed to come out as a lewd threat. There were a lot of serious-looking young women around these days, looking as unsure as he felt, and his attempts at joviality withered like green shoots in a desert, so it was easier not to try at all. By degrees, he sank into a loneliness that embarrassed him, and which he would never dare express.
Barratt left for town every morning, walking down lanes and threading between ivy-clad sandstone cuttings to Franche, and walked into the town centre down increasingly industrialised streets. Here Alice would be waiting for him outside the library with a warm smile and flask of warm and good-tasting tea. She was a serious-looking girl with dark hair, tall and slender but with a smile that took Barratt’s breath away, it was an illuminating, golden smile. Together they would go to the nearest cafe and talk. And how they talked – it had been one of the first things he had noticed about her: how at ease she was with him, and how easily they could talk to each other. In the early days of knowing one another, they had sat on the hard chairs after meetings and talked, only looking up and jumping to their feet when the caretaker jangled his keys. The old caretaker had shaken his head and smiled.
In the early days, Barratt stood with Alice in the town centre streets trying to give out leaflets to people who never paused. Then he started helping with producing the leaflets, suggesting improvements on layout and was soon asked on to the committee. It was during this time he felt twinges of guilt over Sykes. Often when he got back to the cave after working late, he had found Sykes smoking a cigarette, lying on his mattress, just staring at the ceiling. So, at these times, he had suggested Sykes come along and help out, to which Sykes had always shaken his head. It was as though he, Barratt, was finding his way out, but Sykes refused to budge.
Success. That word which could save the past and the present from disintegration, perhaps even give a reason for past suffering. It was his, their way through. Tom took a breath. If that meant being ruthless then maybe that was what they needed to do. War had shattered their innocence, stained them, so society owed them success and he was going to get it. He stood still, trying to savour the idea but in reality, it felt as false to him as had banner-waving patriotism. But then success might banish this unease in him, refocus his mind, so it wasn’t always biting away at the anxieties of ‘if you do this, then that won’t happen’. He hid it so well now, not even Joss seemed to notice; if he did sometimes wonder he probably thought Tom was being over-conscientious. Joss could not guess that in his mind he bartered for Joss’s safety, or the continuance of the farm, of peace breaking down again. Every time he tried to kick the habit, an almost paralysing ‘what if’ scenario would rush at him and he reached out for the temporary relief of making bargains or thinking about numbers.
