‘Yes, just a minute,’ she would say. ‘I want your opinion on these geese. I’m thinking we might increase our stock.’
Or it might be the guinea fowl, or some new patent feeding-trough, that Robert had to go and see.
‘Mother makes such a meal of it,’ he complained once to his grandfather. ‘I could’ve been home by half-past-ten if it wasn’t for all this trailing about.’
‘You went and made a mistake, boy, when you tied yourself to her apron-strings. You’ll never do a proper man’s work while your mother’s got hold of you, running you round.’
‘No, well,’ Robert said, ‘it’s only until the end of the year, then I shall get a proper job.’
‘If you can tear yourself free,’ Jack said.
Linn had recently bought three goats, a billy goat and two nannies. The idea was that they should graze the ‘bit of rough’: the ten acre field of tussocky grass, up by the copse at the top of the farm, where they would eat the brambles and briars that infested this neglected ground.
The goats, however, had other ideas, and they were always breaking out. It was the billy that caused the trouble. He, with his long, powerful horns, could push his way through any hedge, and where he went the nannies followed. ‘Old Moses,’ Charlie called him, ‘leading his tribe to the promised land.’ Once they got into the garden and did a lot of damage to the currant-bushes before they were discovered there. They would have to be tethered, Linn said, and she asked Robert to see to it.
Jack and Robert detested the goats. They were more trouble than they were worth. The nannies would never stand still to be milked and every day, morning and evening, Linn called upon Jack or Robert to come and hold them still for her.
One night the billy got out of ‘the rough’ and was discovered in the morning nibbling the turnip-tops in the Corner Field. Robert was sent to fetch him out.
‘And perhaps this time,’ Linn said crossly, ‘you’ll see that you tether him properly.’
‘Don’t blame me!’ Robert said. ‘The brute has eaten through his rope!’
‘What you should do,’ Charlie said, ‘is to dip the rope in creosote.’
‘Damn the goats!’ Robert said. ‘I don’t know why we have them!’
‘It’s surely not too much trouble,’ Linn said, ‘just to look after three goats for me?’
But it was not only the goats. His mother was always on at him. She would call him away from his proper work to hunt down a rat she had seen in the barn or to oil the hinge on the dairy door or to remove a dead bird that had drowned itself in the drinking-trough. Whenever two cockerels got into a fight she would call upon Robert to separate them and she was always asking him to watch out for hens that were laying away.
On Wednesdays, when she went into town, Robert fed the poultry for her. Sometimes there was a mash to be mixed and Linn’s directions were precise. Everything had to be done just so. Even when scattering corn for them, there were certain rules to be observed.
‘You know that speckly hen with two toes? And the three whites that are moulting just now? I want you to stay and watch over them and see that they get their proper share.’
But this was not a man’s way and Robert forgot these niceties. He scattered the grain and that was that. But it so happened, one Wednesday morning, that Linn returned to the house for her purse and saw how little attention he paid to these precise directions of hers.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said to you about those hens that need special care?’
Robert gave a careless shrug.
‘I reckon they get their share all right.’
‘I don’t understand you lately,’ she said. ‘You used to take pains in pleasing me but now you don’t seem to care at all. You don’t even listen to what I say.’
Robert merely turned away, muttering something under his breath, and Linn had to hurry to catch her bus.
Robert’s moods seemed to get worse and her patience was sorely tried at times. Often the boy avoided her. She would call for him and he would not come. Once, on going into the barn, she heard him slip out by the other door, and when she followed he was not to be seen.
‘Didn’t you hear me calling you?’ she asked him, later, at dinner-time. ‘This morning, early, in the barn?’
‘You’re always calling me,’ he said.
One day she sent him down to the village, to deliver some cards at the houses there, advertising produce for sale.
‘But that’ll take me hours!’ he said, and his face was like a thundercloud.
‘Don’t you want the farm to do well?’
‘What I want is a chance to get on with some proper work!’ Angrily he went to the door and yanked his jacket down from its peg. ‘I’m supposed to help with running the farm but what have I done these past few weeks? ‒ Nothing but fiddle and waste my time! I don’t do a stroke of proper work. Granddad has to do it all.’
‘Your granddad can manage well enough.’
‘That’s just it!’ Robert said. ‘I ent needed here at all! I’m nothing but an errand-boy!’
He snatched the cards from the kitchen table and thrust them into his jacket pocket.
‘Don’t get them dog-eared, please,’ Linn said. ‘I took such trouble writing them out.’
Robert was gone the whole afternoon. Milking-time came and he still wasn’t back. Linn, when she went to bring in the cows, called to her father across the yard.
‘Have you seen Robert anywhere?’
‘Why, has he slipped his leash?’ Jack said.
It was well after six when Robert appeared. The cows were back in the pasture by then and Jack was working the pump in the yard while Linn sluiced her milking-pails out in the trough. Robert came strolling in at the gate and stood before them, silent and still, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets. They both stopped work to look at him. ‘Where have you been all this time?’
‘I’ve been to Piggotts to see Mr Madge.’
‘Piggotts?’ she said. ‘Whatever for?’
‘To ask for a job on the farm.’ Defiantly he met her gaze. ‘I’m to start next Monday morning,’ he said. ‘Mr Madge will want my cards.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ Linn said. Her voice was quiet and icy cold. ‘Why should you want to do such a thing?’
‘It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. You’ve heard me say so often enough. A proper job, on a proper farm, learning all-round farming work.’
‘Isn’t this a proper farm?’
‘You know what I mean,’ Robert muttered.
‘Isn’t a smallholding good enough? Even when it’s your very own?’
‘No. I’d sooner work elsewhere.’
‘In that case,’ she said, controlling herself, ‘it seems you’ve done the only right thing.’
‘Yes, I reckon I have,’ Robert said.
‘It’s your own life. You must do as you please.’
‘Yes, I aim to,’ Robert said.
Linn bent over the trough and turned her pail in the brimming water, sluicing it round and round with her cloth. Jack, his face expressionless, was occupied in lighting his pipe. He took a step backwards, out of range, as the water slopped on to the flags.
‘You’ll drown us all in a minute,’ he said, ‘splashing about in a temper like that.’
Linn let go of the pail again and stood up straight. She looked at her father with blazing eyes.
‘I don’t understand this son of mine! Turning his back on his own farm and going to work for someone else! Where’s the sense in doing that?’
‘I told you from the start,’ Jack said, ‘he’d never be happy raising hens.’
Linn, with an effort, faced her son.
‘What’s the matter with raising hens? There’s a living in it, isn’t there?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ Robert said. ‘It’s just that I want to do other things. I don’t want to spend my life walking about with a pail in my hand, mixing bran-mash and collecting eggs. That’s not my idea of a
man’s proper work. I want to do something more than that.’
‘A man’s proper work!’ Linn exclaimed. ‘You say that with your granddad there? Do you count yourself more of a man than him?’
‘Don’t point at me!’ Jack said. ‘I’m an old man, I’ve had my day. This little farm is about my mark. But Rob’s got his life in front of him. Of course he wants to do something more ‒ so did I when I was his age ‒ and you’ve got no right to stand in his way.’
Linn’s glance faltered and fell. She stared at the water in the trough and her hands moved about in it, absently, groping for her cloth. She found it at last and wrung it out.
‘I shan’t stand in his way,’ she said. ‘If he’s really made up his mind, there’s nothing more to be said on the subject. We’ll leave it alone, finished and done with, and no more words on either side!’
‘Amen to that!’ Jack said.
‘I’m just disappointed, that’s all, that he takes no interest in his own farm. I thought when I bought this little place ‒’
‘You just said there’d be no more words!’
‘Yes! Very well! I’ll say no more!’
She rattled her pail on to the flags.
When Charlie came home and heard the news he looked at Robert reproachfully.
‘I thought you were going to give it a year, at least till your mother was on her feet.’
Robert shrugged.
‘Mother don’t really need me here. She and Granddad can manage all right.’
‘It’s all the same if we can or not!’ Linn was bending over the range, cutting up a hot meat pie and dishing it out onto four plates. ‘We had no say in it, did we?’
‘It’s a good farm, Piggotts,’ Jack remarked, as Robert came to sit at the table. ‘You’ll be well-teached there, sure enough.’
‘It’s the best farm in the neighbourhood, that’s why I chose it,’ Robert said. ‘I was lucky to get taken on.’
‘Only the best will do for our Rob!’ Charlie said in a hearty voice, and glanced anxiously up at Linn. ‘He must’ve made a good impression, to get taken on straight away like that.’
Linn said nothing in answer to this but went to and fro, busily, till all four plates of food were set out.
‘Your mother’s upset,’ Charlie said. ‘You caught her a bit of a winger, you know, suddenly going off like that.’
‘I’m not upset!’ Linn said. ‘I’ve had time to get over it now!’ She drew out her chair and sat down. ‘Not that Robert seems to care whether I’m upset or not!’
Robert sat staring at his plate. His mother’s anger weighed on him. It was like a darkness over his mind.
‘I’m sorry if you’re upset,’ he said, ‘but I reckon I’m entitled to work where I please.’
‘It was the way you went about it more than anything else,’ she said. ‘Sneaking off to Mr Madge, without a word to anyone! Getting into a temper like that because I asked you to deliver those cards!’
‘It’s not only that.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘It’s all sorts of things,’ Robert said.
‘I should like to know what they are.’
‘Hell and damnation!’ Jack said. ‘The boy has told you plain enough so for God’s sake leave it and let’s have some peace!’
Linn, surprised by her father’s outburst, lapsed into silence, folding her lips. Charlie passed his cup to be filled. Robert picked up his knife and fork.
After supper the boy rose and looked at his mother uncertainly.
‘Shall I go and shut up the hens?’
‘You must please yourself,’ she said, ‘but it’s surely not a man’s proper work!’
Robert went out to the chicken-ground and after a while Charlie followed him. Together they shut up the hens for the night and then stood leaning over the gate. Down in the valley a train went by and Charlie looked at his luminous watch.
‘That’s the last train out to Baxtry,’ he said.
‘I wish I was on it!’ Robert exclaimed.
‘Come, now, you don’t mean that.’
‘No, well, maybe not, but with Mother making all this fuss ‒’
‘It was a bit on the sudden side. Why didn’t you tell her first?’
‘She’d have talked me out of it. She’d have played on my feelings and wheedled me round.’
Charlie had to admit it was true. He had seen it often in the past. But now the boy was growing up; becoming harder; asserting himself.
‘Mother runs me around all the time. Granddad knows. He sees it all. He said I ought to strike out for myself and today I decided he was right.’
‘You’ll find you’re run around just the same when you go to work for Mr Madge.’
‘That’s different,’ Robert said. ‘It’s more like ‒ oh, I dunno! ‒ it’s more like the proper order of things.’
‘Your mother’s desperate fond of you.’
‘I know that,’ Robert said, and shifted a little, uncomfortably. ‘But mother’d have me tied in knots if she got too much of a hold on me. It’s better for me to break loose now before the knots get too hard to untie.’
‘Ah, well,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s not as though you’re leaving home. Your mother’ll get over it, given time.’
Sometimes, working in the fields at Piggots, Robert would stop and exchange a salute with his grandfather up in the fields at Stant. At first he experienced a feeling of guilt, seeing the old man there all alone, but the guilty feeling did not last long because he felt he had done the right thing and knew that his grandfather understood.
Soon he belonged heart and soul to those big open fields where he worked by day and where, during that fine summer, the whole of the sky seemed to rest on his shoulders. Every morning, when he set off, it was with a tingling sense of excitement, for the farmyard was a busy place between five and six o’clock and he enjoyed the bustle there. It was a source of pride to him to be part of such an establishment; to help feed the horses and harness them and to watch the carters, responsible men, leading the teams out to the fields; and he looked ahead to future days when he would have charge of such a team and would lead it out to work in the fields.
At present, however, being a newcomer and only a boy, he was given more humble tasks, and day after day he bent his back, working with his hoe in the turnip field. The older, more experienced men would pause now and then to ease their backs, and perhaps even chat for a minute or two; but Robert could never afford to do that if he was to keep pace with them. He had to keep at it, ceaselessly, and never dared take his eyes off the work for fear that he would miss his stroke and cut out the tender turnip-plant as well as the choking growth of weeds.
Often, after such days as these, his back felt as though it would break. The muscles in his arms would be all a-tremble and when he got home in the evenings he had scarcely enough strength left to wash himself under the pump in the yard.
‘You’ve got what’s known as a hoer’s back,’ Charlie remarked cheerfully.
‘Don’t I know it!’ Robert said. ‘I shouldn’t mind overmuch if I never saw another turnip again!’
‘Yet that is what you prefer,’ Linn said, ‘to working here on your own farm!’
She made these bitter remarks sometimes. Her feelings would keep breaking out. But she had to admit that Robert seemed a lot happier now. He no longer spoke to her carelessly; never slipped away, avoiding her; and was always willing to lend a hand with whatever needed doing at Stant. So things were back to normal with them. There was closeness between them, as of old, and although her disappointment remained, she tried to keep it to herself. And she could not help a feeling of pride when, on meeting Mr Madge, he spoke so warmly about her son.
‘He’s a good boy, that Robert of yours. There aren’t many boys nowadays who will do what they’re told and a bit more besides. He’s as keen as mustard and got a good brain. I wish I had a few more like him.’
‘Yes,’ Linn said, somewhat primly. ‘Robert could have done all sor
ts of things, if he hadn’t chosen to go on the land.’
Linn’s little farm was doing well. It was beginning to pay its way. And in August there came a stroke of luck, for the Triggs at Slipfields, who were feeling their age, decided to sell most of their poultry and offered it to her at bargain prices. It followed that they would no longer be supplying eggs to the dealer in Baxtry and this again was lucky for Linn.
‘The contract’s yours if you want it,’ Sam said. ‘They asked me to recommend someone else so just say the word and I’ll give them your name. Do you think you can manage it?’
‘The problem is transport,’ Linn said. ‘Getting the eggs to Scampton Halt.’
‘Jim Smith allus took ’em for us. He’d do it for you if you asked him to.’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Charlie said. ‘I think we should have a motor-van.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Linn said. ‘Dad’ll never drive a van!’
‘Oh? Why not?’ her father said.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you never have.’
‘And you think I’m too old to learn, I suppose?’
‘Besides, where’s the money coming from?’
‘You can afford it,’ Charlie said. ‘It would be an investment, buying a van. Think of all the time it’d save when you’ve got dressed fowls to take here and there. You could even learn to drive yourself.’
‘Oh dear me no!’ Linn said. ‘I should be frightened out of my wits.’
That was going too far. She would not consider such a thing. But the idea of the motor-van was worth considering, certainly; she could see its advantages clearly enough; and if her father was willing to learn to drive ‒
‘Of course I’m willing! Why not?’ Jack said.
Within a week the van was bought; a second-hand Ford, costing eighty pounds; and in no time at all, it seemed to Linn, Charlie had taught her father to drive. Jack’s left knee, injured in his youth, gave him a lot of trouble at first, but Charlie did something to the dutch-pedal and after that the problem was eased.
Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Page 14
