In the Middle of the Fields

by Mary Lavin

  ‘Oh, nothing much, I’m sure,’ she said absently. ‘There!’ She had found the plug, and the room was lit up with a bright white glow.

  ‘Why don’t you leave the plug in the socket?’ he asked critically.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think someone told me it’s safer, with reading lamps, to pull the plugs out at night. There might be a short circuit, or mice might nibble at the cord, or something. I forget what I was told. I got into the habit of doing it, and now I keep on.’ She felt a bit silly.

  But he was concerned about it. ‘I don’t think any harm could be done,’ he said gravely. Then he turned away from the problem. ‘About tomorrow, Ma’am,’ he said, somewhat offhandedly, she thought. ‘I was determined I’d see you tonight, because I’m not a man to break my word, above all, to a woman.’

  What was he getting at?

  ‘Let me put it this way,’ he said quickly. ‘You’ll understand, Ma’am, that as far as I am concerned, topping land is the same as cutting hay. The same time. The same labour. The same cost. And the same wear and tear on the blade. You understand that?’

  On her guard, she nodded.

  ‘Well now, Ma’am, I’d be the first to admit that it’s not quite the same for you. For you, topping doesn’t give the immediate return you’d get from hay.’

  ‘There’s no return from topping,’ she exclaimed crossly.

  ‘Oh, come now, Ma’am! Good grassland pays as well as anything. You know you won’t get nice sweet pickings for your beasts from neglected land, but only dirty old tow grass knotting under their feet. It’s just that it’s not a quick return, and so, as you know, I told you I’d be making a special price for you.’

  ‘I do know,’ she said impatiently. ‘But I thought that part of it was settled and done.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not going back on it, if that’s what you think,’ he said affably. ‘I’m glad to do what I can for you, Ma’am, the more so seeing you have no man to attend to these things for you, but only yourself alone.’

  ‘Oh, I’m well able to look after myself,’ she said, raising her voice.

  Once again her words had an opposite effect to what she intended. He laughed good-humouredly. ‘That’s what all women like to think,’ he said. ‘Well, now,’ he went on in a different tone of voice, and it annoyed her to see he seemed to think something had been settled between them, ‘it would suit me, and I’m sure it’s all the same to you, if we could leave your little job till later in the week, say till nearer to the time of the haymaking generally. Because by then I’d have the cutting bar in good order, sharpened and ready for use. Whereas now, while there’s still a bit of ploughing to be done here and there, I’ll have to be chopping and changing, between the plough and the mower, putting one on one minute and the other the next.’

  ‘As if anyone is still ploughing this time of the year! Who are you putting before me?’ she demanded.

  ‘Now, take it easy, Ma’am. I’m not putting anyone before you, leastways, not without getting leave first from you.’

  ‘Without telling me you’re not coming, you mean.’

  ‘Oh, now, Ma’am, don’t get cross. I’m only trying to make matters easy for everyone.’

  She was very angry now. ‘It’s always the same story. I thought you’d treat me differently. I’m to wait till after this one, and after that one, and in the end my fields will go wild.’

  He looked a bit shamefaced. ‘Ah now, Ma’am, that’s not going to be the case at all. Although, mind you, some people don’t hold with topping, you know.’

  ‘I hold with it.’

  ‘Oh, I suppose there’s something in it,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But the way I look at it, cutting the weeds in July is a kind of a topping.’

  ‘Grass cut before it goes to seed gets so thick at the roots no weeds can come up,’ she cried, so angry she didn’t realise how authoritative she sounded.

  ‘Faith, I never knew you were so well up, Ma’am,’ he said, looking at her admiringly, but she saw he wasn’t going to be put down by her. ‘All the same now, Ma’am, you can’t say a few days here or there could make any difference?’

  ‘A few days could make all the difference. This farm has a gravelly bottom to it, for all it’s too lush. A few days of drought could burn it to the butt. And how could I mow it then? And what cover would there be for the “nice sweet pickings” you were talking about a minute ago?’ Angrily, she mimicked his own accent without thinking.

  He threw up his hands. ‘Ah well, I suppose a man may as well admit when he’s bested,’ he said. ‘Even by a woman. And you can’t say I broke my promise.’

  ‘I can’t say but you tried hard enough,’ she said grudgingly, although she was mollified that she was getting her way. ‘Can I offer you anything?’ she said then, anxious to convey an air of finality to their discussion.

  ‘Not at all, Ma’am. Nothing, thank you. I’ll have to be getting home.’

  ‘I hope you won’t think I was trying to take advantage of you,’ he said as they went towards the door. ‘It’s just that we must all make out as best we can for ourselves, isn’t that so? Not but you are well able to look after yourself, I must say. No one ever thought you’d stay on here after your husband died. I suppose it’s for the children you did it?’ He looked up the well of the stairs. ‘Are they asleep?’

  ‘Oh, long ago,’ she said indifferently. She opened the hall door. The night air swept in. But this time, from far away, it brought with it the fragrance of new-mown hay. ‘There’s hay cut somewhere already,’ she exclaimed in surprise. And she lifted her face to the sweetness of it.

  For a minute, Crossen looked past her out into the darkness, then he looked back at her. ‘Aren’t you never lonely here at night?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘You mean frightened?’ she corrected quickly and coldly.

  ‘Yes! Yes, that’s what I meant,’ he said, taken aback. ‘Ah, but why would you be frightened? What safer place could you be under the sky than right here with your own fields all about you.’

  What he said was so true, and he himself as he stood there, with his hat in his hand, so normal and natural it was indeed absurd to think that he would no sooner have gone out the door than she would be scurrying up the stairs like a child. ‘You may not believe it,’ she said, ‘but I am scared to death sometimes. I nearly died when I heard your knock on the door tonight. It’s because I was scared that I was upstairs,’ she said, in a further burst of confidence. ‘I always go up the minute it gets dark. I don’t feel so frightened upstairs.’

  ‘Isn’t that strange now?’ he said, and she could see he found it an incomprehensibly womanly thing to do. He was sympathetic all the same. ‘You shouldn’t be alone. That’s the truth of the matter,’ he said. ‘It’s a shame.’

  ‘Oh, it can’t be helped,’ she said. There was something she wanted to shrug off in his sympathy, while at the same time she appreciated the kindliness. ‘Would you like to do something for me?’ she asked impulsively. ‘Would you wait and put out the lights down here and let me get back upstairs before you go? Ned often does that for me if he’s working here late: After she had spoken she felt foolish, but she saw at once that, if anything, he thought it only too little to do for her. He was genuinely troubled about her. And it wasn’t only the present moment that concerned him; he seemed to be considering the whole problem of her isolation and loneliness.

  ‘Is there nobody could stay here with you, at night even? It would have to be another woman, of course,’ he added quickly, and her heart was warmed by the way, without a word from her, he rejected that solution out of hand. ‘You don’t want another woman about the place,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Oh, I’m all right, really. I’ll get used to it,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a shame, all the same,’ he said. He said it helplessly, though, and he motioned her tow
ards the stairs. ‘You’ll be all right for tonight, anyway. Go on up the stairs now, and I’ll put out the lights.’ He had already turned around to go back into the sitting-room.

  Yet it wasn’t quite as she intended for some reason, and it was somewhat reluctantly that she started up the stairs.

  ‘Wait a minute! How do I put out this one?’ he called out from the room before she was halfway up.

  ‘Oh, I’d better put out that one myself,’ she said, thinking of the awkward position of the plug. She ran down again, and, going past him into the little room, she knelt and pulled at the cord. Instantly the room was deluged in darkness. And instantly she felt that she had done something stupid. It was not like turning out a light by a switch at the door and being able to step back into the lighted hall. She got to her feet as quickly as she could, but as she did, she saw that Crossen was standing in the doorway. His bulk was blocked out against the hall light behind him. ‘I’ll leave the rest to you,’ she said to break the peculiar silence that had come down on the house. But he didn’t move. He stood there, the full of the doorway, and she was reluctant to brush past him.

  Why didn’t he move? Instead he caught her by the arm, and, putting out his other hand, he pressed his palm against the door-jamb, barring her way.

  ‘Tell me,’ he whispered, his words falling over each other, ‘are you never lonely at all?’

  ‘What did you say?’ she said in a clear voice, because the thickness of his voice sickened her. She had barely heard what he said. Her one thought was to get past him.

  He leaned forward. ‘What about a little kiss?’ he whispered, and to get a better hold on her he let go the hand he had pressed against the wall, but before he caught at her with both hands she had wrenched her all free of him, and, ignominiously ducking under his armpit, she was out next minute in the lighted hall.

  Out there, because light was all the protection she needed from him, the old fool, she began to laugh. She had only to wait for him to come sheepishly out. But there was something she hadn’t counted on; she hadn’t counted on there being anything pathetic in his sheepishness, something really pitiful in the way he shambled into the light, not raising his eyes. And she was so surprisingly touched that before he had time to utter a word she put out her hand. ‘Don’t feel too bad,’ she said. ‘I didn’t take offence.’

  Still he didn’t look at her. He just took her hand and pressed it gratefully, his face turned away. And to her dismay she saw that his nose was running water. Like a small boy, he wiped it with the back of his fist, streaking his face. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m getting on to be an old man. I thought I was beyond all that.’ He wiped his face again. ‘Beyond letting myself go, anyway,’ he amended miserably.

  ‘Oh, it was nothing,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t as if I had cause for what I did.’

  ‘But you did nothing,’ she protested.

  ‘It wasn’t nothing to me,’ he said dejectedly.

  For a minute, they stood there silent. The hall door was still ajar, but she didn’t dare to close it. What am I going to do with him now, she thought, I’ll have him here all night if I’m not careful. What time was it, anyway? All scale and proportion seemed to have gone from the night. ‘Well, I’ll see you in the morning, Mr Crossen,’ she said, as matter-of-factly as possible.

  He nodded, but made no move to go. ‘You know I meant no disrespect to you, Ma’am, don’t you?’ he said, looking imploringly at her. ‘I always had a great regard for you. And for your husband, too. I was thinking of him this very night when I was coming up to the house. And I thought of him again when you came to the door looking like a young girl. I thought what a pity it was him to be taken from you, and you both so young. Oh, what came over me at all? And what would Mona say if she knew?’

  ‘But surely you wouldn’t tell her? I should certainly hope not,’ Vera cried, appalled. What sort of a figure would she cut if he told the wife about her coming down in her bare feet with her hair down her back. ‘Take care would you tell her!’ she warned.

  ‘I don’t suppose I ought,’ he said, but he said it uncertainly and morosely, and he leaned back against the wall. ‘She’s been a good woman, Mona. I wouldn’t want anyone to think different. My sons could tell you. She’s been a good mother to them all these years. She never made a bit of difference between them. Some say she was better to Barty than to any of them. She reared him from a week old. She was living next door to us, you see, at the time I was left with him,’ he said. ‘She came in that first night and took him home to her own bed, and, mind you, that wasn’t a small thing for a woman who knew nothing about children, not being what you’d call a young girl, in spite of the big family she gave me afterwards. She took him home and looked after him, although it isn’t every woman would care to be responsible for a newborn baby. That’s a thing a man doesn’t forget easy. There’s many I know would say that if she hadn’t taken him someone else would, but no one only her would have done it the way she did. She used to keep him all day in her own cottage, feeding him and the rest of it. But at night, when I’d be back from the fields, she’d bring him home and leave him down in his little crib by the fire alongside of me. She used to let on she had things to do in her own place, and she’d slip away and leave us alone, but that wasn’t her real reason for leaving him. She knew the way I’d be sitting looking into the fire, wondering how I’d face the long years ahead, and she left the child there with me to distract me from my sorrow. And she was right. I never got long to brood. The child would give a cry, or a whinge, and I’d have to run out and fetch her to him. Or else she’d hear him herself maybe, and run in without me having to call her at all. I used often think she must have kept every window and door in her place open, for fear she’d lose a sound from either of us. And so, bit by bit, I was knit back into a living man. I often wondered what would have become of me if it wasn’t for her. There are men and when the bright way closes to them there’s no knowing but they’ll take a dark way. And I was that class of man. I told you she used to take the little fellow away in the day and bring him back at night? Well, of course, she used to take him away again coming on to the real dark of night. She used to keep him in her own bed. But as the months went on and he got bigger, I could see she hated taking him away from me at all. He was beginning to smile and play with his fists and be real company. “I wonder ought I leave him with you tonight,” she’d say then, night after night. And sometimes she’d run in and dump him down in the middle of the big double bed in the room off the kitchen, but the next minute she’d snatch him up again. “I’d be afraid you’d overlie him. You might only smother him, God between us and all harm!”

  ‘“You’d better take him,” I’d say. I used to hate to see him go myself by this time. All the same, I was afraid he’d start crying in the night, and what would I do then? If I had to go out for her in the middle of the night, it could cause a lot of talk. There was talk enough as things were, I can tell you, although there was no grounds for it. I had no more notion of her than if she wasn’t a woman at all. Would you believe that? But one night when she took him up and put him down, and put him down and took him up, and went on and went on about leaving him or taking him, I had to laugh. “It’s a pity you can’t stay along with him, and that would settle all,” I said. I was only joking her, but she got as red as fire, and next thing she burst out crying. But not before she’d caught up the child and wrapped her coat around him. Then, after giving me a terrible look, she ran out the door with him. Well, that was the beginning of it. I’d no idea she had any feelings for me. I thought it was only for the child. But men are fools, as women well know, and she knew before me what was right and proper for us both. And for the child too. Some women have great insight into these things. That night God opened my own eyes to the woman I had in her, and I saw it was better I took her than wasted away after the one tha
t was gone. And wasn’t I right?’

  ‘Of course you were right,’ she said quickly.

  But he had slumped back against the wall, and the abject look came back into his eyes. ‘And to think I shamed her as well as myself.’

  I’ll never get rid of him, Vera thought desperately. ‘Ah, what ails you?’ she cried impatiently. ‘Forget it, can’t you?’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said simply.

  ‘Ah, for heaven’s sake. It’s got nothing to do with her at all.’

  Surprised, he looked up at her. ‘You’re not blaming yourself, surely?’ he asked.

  She’d have laughed at that if she hadn’t seen she was making headway. Another stroke and she’d be rid of him. ‘Why are you blaming any of us?’ she cried. ‘It’s got nothing to do with any of us, with you, or me, or the woman at home waiting for you. It was the other one you should blame, that girl, your first wife, Bridie! Blame her!’ The words had broken uncontrollably from her. For a moment, she thought she was hysterical and that she could not stop. ‘You thought you could forget her,’ she cried, ‘but see what she did to you when she got the chance.’

  He stood for a moment at the open door. ‘God rest her soul,’ he said, without looking back, and he stepped into the night.

  The Lucky Pair

  Vera picked him out in the sea of dancers. He had kept his head above water, jostled but never submerged, as he jerked his partners up and down. He was not sucked under even when in the final flourishes of a number the ends of dresses lashed together into a wild and briary foam. Not even when the spotlights showed the motes of dust to be a rising flood in which the violinists raised their violins – shoulder-high as if in the last minutes before catastrophe. She knew him by sight, of course. She knew his name, too. He was Andrew Gill, incoming Auditor of the Students Law Society, an office that made him automatically chairman of the dance. And because he was tall, of course the red ribbon with the auditorial insignia was very conspicuous across his shoulders. Did he have to wear those other medals, though, she wondered? Perhaps he was conceited, as his fellow students in the Law Faculty declared. She herself felt sure he just wore them tonight to give dignity to the dance.