In the Middle of the Fields

by Mary Lavin

  Mr Parr shook his head. ‘How do we get in?’ He tugged at the gate but it did not budge. Yet in the mud of the drive he saw the tracks of a cart. After a closer scrutiny he saw that the cart had come out through a gap in the hedge where a number of rotten planks and a sheet of warped roofing-iron had been thrown across the ditch. The old man eyed this pass-way distrustfully. Getting back into the car he parked it carefully on the far side of the road and proceeded to help Miss Lomas down. ‘We’ll walk up if you don’t mind,’ he said, and he began to make his way up the drive through the puddles and potholes. ‘Ah dear!’ he murmured again and again when, sidestepping a puddle, he nearly had his eye pulled out by a briar trailing out from a hedge. Through a gap in the hedge he saw with alarm the barren state of the land. Field ran into field, and the headlands could only be distinguished by an abandoned ploughshare or a rusty harrow through the iron ribs of which the grass had grown, riveting them like skeletons to the earth. ‘Ah dear! Ah dear!’ the old man kept muttering, and even Miss Lomas plodding along beside him, was hardly prepared for seeing from without the neglect with which she was more familiar from within. Even she had not realised what a shambles had been made of the actual farmland. She gave her attention to the house.

  Poor Brook Farm. The windows were broken, the paint peeled away, and from the gutters there spilled out a filthy green fungus. As for the roof, not only were there the holes where tiles had blown off, but the whole roof sagged in the middle like an old mattress.

  At last the pair reached the place where formerly the driveway had swept inward towards the hall-door, but humbly Miss Lomas plodded past this point and went around the gable to the back door. Mr Parr followed wordlessly and when she stood back to let him pass into the kitchen, he was so appalled by the dirt and decay that he gladly sank down on a backless chair she proffered him. Following his astonished gaze Miss Lomas too stared around. Rot, woodworm, rat holes and holes where fixtures had been torn out of the walls, the place, even on that summer evening, was like a sieve. Except for the chair on which he sat and the grime-coated kitchen table, the kitchen was bare, while through the hall­way it could be seen that the parlour too, that once was stuffed with armchairs and carpets, was now as empty as a shed. Miss Lomas felt the moment called for some comfort.

  ‘We were lucky to get the place before he did irremediable harm. Christy, I mean,’ she said. She pointed up at a hole in the lath-and-plaster of the ceiling overhead. He’d have torn out the laths for firing, only he couldn’t reach up to get at them,’ she said. ‘If you stand here, and look up, you’ll see where he tried to bring them down by battering at them with the handle of the sweeping brush.’ But as she pulled at his sleeve her own foot suddenly went down through one of the floor boards, because this spot on the floor was under the spot in the ceiling that was under the spot on the roof where the tiles had blown away and let in the rain. To pass off the awkwardness she laughed, although her foot hurt. But Mr Parr didn’t join in the laughter. ‘It will cost a King’s ransom to put this place to rights, if it can be done at all,’ he said sharply.

  For a minute Miss Lomas said nothing. Then she too spoke with some asperity.

  ‘All that need be done at the start is put an appearance on the place.’

  The phrase was so quaint Mr Parr was taken aback. Mistaking his sudden scrutiny of her face for interest in her proposition Miss Lomas’s own face lit up with eagerness. ‘What would it involve but some slates on the roof, a few tins of paint, a length or two of new timber and a couple of pounds of nails.’ As she saw his eye rest on the broken window in the kitchen she frowned impatiently, not at it but at him. ‘That’s nothing,’ she said. ‘There’s a few panes gone elsewhere in the house too, but glass is cheap. If only there had been a bit of putty put in these window frames from time to time, the glass would never have fallen out. Indeed if there had been money made available to me for polishes and cleaning powders, there mightn’t have been any repairs needed at all.’ Suddenly she ran out into the hall and called the solicitor to come after her. ‘The rest of the house is very well preserved,’ she said, ‘only for a few damp spots. Would you like to look around?’ But although they had not noticed it steal into the house, the gloom of dusk had come down on Brook Farm. Nothing daunted, Miss Lomas looked around for matches. ‘There are no lights in the front of the house, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘The bulbs have all blown, and some of the switches are defective. With years of damp and disuse wires perish, you know. In any case it would not have been safe to have light bulbs in empty rooms where they’d only be left burning day and night by irresponsible people. As a matter of fact, even in the old days, I was worried about the wiring here. It was not in a very good state when the Garrets bought the place. They were always intending to renew it. I myself was always pressing Joss to have it done,’ she paused, ‘before the little upset occurred.’ But seeing Mr Parr look startled she lowered her voice – ‘his death, I mean!’ She thought he was even more startled at this, but it was hard to see anything clearly now in the dark. ‘The re-wiring of the house ought to be attended to at once. There’s nothing as dangerous as faulty electricity. And now is our opportunity to get it done at a low cost,’ she added, as if she were speaking to a child, and she pointed to a rat hole, ‘now while there are holes and cracks everywhere the wires can be run through the house without taking up floorboards and splintering the wainscot. You know what electricians are!’ Then suddenly she had an inspiration. ‘I suppose one of your nephews wouldn’t happen to be handy about the house? Would there be one of them that could attend to the wiring for instance? Think what a saving that would be! And at the same time he would be getting the benefit of the fresh air and the wonderful peace and quiet of the country. How about the young man I saw in your office? How about him?’ She paused and then she leaned forward and spoke in a loud confident tone. ‘I don’t want to frighten you, but by the look of him I’d say the sooner you get him out here to Brook Farm the better. In fact I’d say there is no time to be lost. I still think he ought to come out right away. Tonight.’

  Mr Parr said nothing for a minute. The various expressions that had crossed over his face since she first burst into his office had mingled into one overall look of panic. Inside his waistcoat his heart was hopping about like a frog. ‘Tell me, Miss Lomas,’ he said, and he took a little backward skip as if to get away from the sound of his own voice. ‘Tell me! How do you think the local people will take to the notion of my having bought the place?’ He looked very perturbed.

  Miss Lomas was quite unperturbed. She gave a sidelong look at him.

  ‘How are they to know you didn’t buy it long ago!’ she said. Mr Parr gave her an uneasy look. Miss Lomas hurried on. ‘Anyway why should anyone know your business until we are good and ready to let them know.’ She drew herself up proudly. ‘It was not for nothing that I always preserved the privacy of Brook Farm. What more natural than that now, with Miss Garret in a home and Christy gone off that you would have to be here a lot – and your nephews likewise. It will take a bit of time to counteract the impression you gave by your former indifference but no one will question what you do, if you go about it gradually. You must however start to show some interest straight away, to walk around the fields, be seen attending to mearings and gates at first, before later going a bit further. If one of your nephews, the young fellow I met, was to show an interest too and be seen cutting a few hedges, or painting the gates, in no time at all it would be thought natural that he’d sleep here as well in order to get an early start in the mornings with so much to be done.’ She stopped short to ponder some problems she couldn’t take time to explain. ‘On second thought, I think he had better not come out tonight, but wait till he’s been remarked paying an odd visit, or eating an odd meal here. Do you get me?’ She gave him a wink. ‘And from that,’ she cried, her excitement rising, ‘it would be a small step for the girls to spend a few days of the summer here – making it seem like
a little holiday. Oh, how wonderful it would be, for all concerned to have them here,’ she cried, clasping her hands over her chest, so that in the dark, it seemed for a moment that once again she was the big goose-bosomed woman of long ago. ‘Summer is not far off, you know,’ she warned, ‘and you know what the summers are like out here. You could eventually all come and go as you wished. I’m sure your sister would benefit from a change. As for you!’ She looked at him so penetratingly that the whole cast of her thought was for a moment darkened. ‘Oh dear, isn’t it a pity you couldn’t have bought the place long ago,’ she said. ‘Think of how different everything would have been!’

  There was such a note of regret in her voice that they both sighed. ‘My dear Miss Lomas,’ said Mr Parr, ‘Brook Farm in the old days would have been far too grand for the like of me!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Miss Lomas. ‘And even if that was the case, you can’t say it’s too grand for you now.’

  Unfortunately at that moment, her eye caught the glint of goldleaf on a fragment of a Crown Derby saucer that was stopping a mousehole near the door, and she recalled all the good times which had gone. ‘Oh, poor Brook Farm!’ she said again and this time tears gushed into her eyes.

  ‘You really love the place, don’t you Miss Lomas?’ Mr Parr said, profoundly struck by her grief.

  Miss Lomas made no attempt to wipe away her tears. She just looked into his. ‘Don’t you?’ she asked.

  Mr Parr peered around. His reply was non-committal but Miss Lomas could read him like a book. ‘I suppose it would do no harm to start repairing the ravages at once,’ he said, ‘or at least put a stop to the inroads of decay.’

  Halfway down Miss Lomas’s cheek a tear dried up and did not fall. ‘That’s the right spirit,’ she said.

  It was now so dark inside the house that instinctively Mr Parr moved towards the door. Miss Lomas followed. Outdoors there was still a little light, at least in the sky, and against it Brook Farm reared up in all the strength of its hand-cut granite stone. It was, indeed, a gem, and for all the decay within, it was as if some concept of beauty had outlived its execution in perishable form. As for the land, was not the earth at all times indestructible? Across the dark fields it was no longer possible to see the copse of conifers that marked out the cemetery. But Miss Lomas no longer felt her interest in the cemetery so obsessive, or her appointment with it so imminent. She turned eagerly to Mr Parr. ‘I did not ask about the girls at all,’ she cried apologetically. ‘How are they? They must be young ladies by now. Dear me. We must make great haste if we are to have the place suitable for them. It is so important for young ladies that their background be as gracious as possible. Oh, it will be really wonderful to have them here. It will be just like the old days – only gayer.’ As she saw Mr Parr seemed to falter, she caught his arm. ‘It is not money that makes a house into a home,’ she said, ‘it is the presence of people. I wish I had a glass of wine to offer you, so that we might celebrate this happy solution to our difficulties.’

  As if he felt giddy, Mr Parr seemed to reel slightly. ‘Is it wise to go so fast?’ he asked nervously. Miss Lomas swept aside such timidity.

  ‘If we are to be ready for the summer, we must start at once,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, I suppose. I’ll be up at dawn, astir with the birds.’