‘Yes, if only,’ Charlie said.
‘Other people send goods from the Halt. Why couldn’t it have been one of them who saw the girders on the line? And if Fred Mitchell hadn’t been late ‒’
‘Try not to dwell on it too much, you’ll only upset yourself,’ Charlie said.
At first it was thought that the girders had fallen from the train by accident, but after a while, as gossip spread, it became common knowledge that George Cressy had been responsible. Charlie reproached himself bitterly.
‘If I hadn’t given him that money to spend, he wouldn’t have got so crazy-drunk, and the whole thing might never have happened,’ he said.
‘You weren’t to know,’ Linn said. ‘You did your best to send him home.’
Later they read in the newspaper that George had been sent to Gloucester gaol and later still Charlie heard that George, on coming out of gaol, had made his way to Liverpool and ‘gone as a stoker on the ships’. Nothing much was heard of him after that and it was to be five years before he was seen in Scampton again.
Charlie was still working at home. He no longer thought of getting a job. From the day of Jack’s death, he had stepped into the old man’s shoes, and took it for granted that this state of affairs would now continue indefinitely. It seemed the obvious, most logical course, and sensible in every way. In fact it seemed so obvious that he never thought to discuss it with Linn and when the subject did come up he spoke of it as a settled thing.
‘Sometimes I think it must’ve been fate, my losing my job at the garage like that, as though I was meant to be on hand to take over when your dad died.’
It was a wet day in April and he and Linn were in the dairy. Linn was washing the day’s eggs and Charlie was sorting them into grades.
‘As a matter of fact,’ Linn said, ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.’
‘Talk away, then. I’m all ears.’
‘When you first stopped at home, it was only supposed to be for a while, and then you were going to look for a job.’
‘But that’s all changed now Jack’s gone. You can’t run the farm by yourself.’
‘If Robert gave up working at Piggotts, he could help me run the farm.’
‘That didn’t work when you tried it before. Robert didn’t care for it.’
‘He might have changed his mind by now.’
‘Then why hasn’t he mentioned it?’
‘He wouldn’t like to, while you’re at home.’
‘You mean I’m standing in his way?’
For a moment Charlie remained quite still, frowning at the crock full of eggs. Then his hands resumed their work, grading the eggs into their trays.
‘Seems we’d better talk to Rob and get it sorted out with him.’
‘Yes, I’ll ask him,’ Linn said.
But when she mentioned the matter to Robert he stared at her in astonishment.
‘Leave Piggotts? Whatever for? I thought Charlie was running things here?’
‘Don’t you want to come back and take over running your own farm?’
‘Well, I dunno, it all depends.’ He looked at Charlie uncertainly. ‘If Charlie’s wanting to get a job ‒’
‘That’s just your mother’s idea,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m quite happy as I am.’
‘Then I don’t see what all the fuss is about.’
‘Is it fussing,’ Linn said, ‘to expect my one and only son to take an interest in his own farm?’
‘Mother, we’ve been through this before!’ Robert said impatiently. ‘If I was really needed here, I’d come like a shot, you know I would. But if Charlie’s willing to stop as he is ‒’
‘Oh, Charlie’s willing enough!’ Linn said. ‘Charlie’s already dug in his heels!’
Charlie and Robert looked at each other. The boy was indignant on Charlie’s behalf and an angry retort rose to his lips, but Charlie, with a shake of his head, warned him to let the matter drop. He himself spoke in a quiet voice.
‘So long as I know where we stand, you and me, I reckon that’s all that counts,’ he said. ‘Your mother seemed to think I was in the way of your coming back here to work but now I know that isn’t true, well, it seems we’ve sorted it out all right.’
‘Yes,’ Robert said, ‘I reckon we have.’
But later, out in the yard with Charlie, the boy mentioned the matter again.
‘What’s up with Mother suddenly? Why is she making such a to-do?’
‘She’s still upset,’ Charlie said. ‘Your granddad’s death has hit her hard. She’s not too keen on me stepping into his shoes like this, but she’ll get over it, given time.’
The farm by now was Charlie’s whole life and he was full of plans and ideas. He wanted to bring every inch of land under proper cultivation and eventually, when that was done, the farm would be able to carry more stock.
‘And where is the money coming from to carry out these schemes of yours?’
‘Money ploughed back into the farm is money invested,’ Charlie said. ‘Every farmer will tell you that.’ And then, as Linn remained silent, he said: ‘Don’t you care for my ideas?’
‘I don’t care for risking my money.’
‘No, well, that’s up to you. You know if the farm can stand it or not.’
‘While we’re on the subject of money, I’ve been doing some thinking lately, about your getting a job again.’
‘I thought we’d already settled that.’
‘You may have settled it. I have not.’
Linn, with her egg-book in front of her, had been totting up the figures in it. Now she paused and looked at him.
‘If I got a man to help me here, it would cost me thirty-two shillings a week. You could earn more than twice that as a skilled mechanic in a garage somewhere.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s true,’ Charlie said, ‘but money isn’t everything.’
‘Oh, that sounds very fine, I’m sure, but you like spending it well enough!’
‘Are you trying to tell me that I’m not really earning my keep by what I do in the way of work?’
‘Now you’re just putting words in my mouth.’
‘A man wouldn’t do the hours I do, not for thirty-two shillings,’ he said.
‘So long as he did what I asked him to do, I should be quite satisfied.’
Charlie got up out of his chair and stood lighting a cigarette, looking down at Linn’s bent head as she turned the pages of her egg-book.
‘It seems you’d sooner have just about anybody working here, so long as it’s not me,’ he said. ‘Is it on account of your dad? Because I took over after him?’
‘It’s because you take over everything!’ Again she looked up and met his gaze. ‘First you decide to stop at home and now you’re full of big ideas for making changes everywhere! Lately I’ve begun to feel that it isn’t really my farm at all!’
‘I made some suggestions, that’s all. You soon let me know if they don’t suit. You’re the gaffer around here. You’re the one who says what’s what.’
‘And who takes notice of what I say? I want Robert to work the farm but I haven’t got my way over that!’
‘Robert’s made it perfectly plain that it doesn’t suit him to work at home.’
‘But it does suit you?’
‘It suits me fine.’
‘When I first met you, years ago, you said you’d never go back to working on the land again.’
‘Aren’t I allowed to change my mind? I’m going back to my old roots. It’s what I was born to, after all.’
‘What I don’t understand is that you should be content to stay at home and draw your wages from your wife.’
‘What difference does it make? Your dad drew his wages from you and so did Rob while he was here ‒’
‘The difference is this ‒ that you are my husband!’ Linn exclaimed. ‘Is it so hard to understand?’
Charlie was silent, looking at her. Then, with a sigh, he turned away and threw his cigarette-end into the stove.
After a while he spoke again.
‘So long as I don’t mind,’ he said, ‘I don’t see why it should worry you.’
He took out his watch and looked at it. It was time for him to go on his rounds. He went to the door and there he paused.
‘It seems to me only common sense that I should work the farm for you, but if you’re really against it and the money means as much as all that, well, just say the word and I’ll get a job.’
But Linn had already said the word and Charlie, she felt, had chosen to ignore it. She had made her feelings plain enough and he had merely shrugged them aside. Whatever he said about pleasing her, he went his own way and that was that.
Although in time Linn came to accept the situation, her feelings about it remained the same, and she tried to explain them to herself. Charlie, the skilled motor-mechanic, going to his own work every day, had been a man of independence and she had been able to look up to him; but Charlie, working at Stant Farm, relying on her for his living, had forfeited something of her respect; and it was a great disappointment to her that, instead of forging his own way in the world, he had chosen the easier path, content to be her hired man.
Once she tried to explain it to him but he had a knack, somehow, of always putting her in the wrong.
‘You mean you thought more highly of me, just because of the money I earnt?’
But he understood well enough what it was she was trying to say. Secretly, in his heart of hearts, he felt the loss of his dignity, but he was building it up again by working extra hard on the farm; by keeping everything spick and span; by making improvements all the time and increasing productivity.
There was good ground lying idle at Stant. They could easily raise a handful of sheep, if only Linn would agree to it, and if he could drain the ten acre field and clear the reeds and rushes there, they would be able to grow more corn. But first money had to be spent. That, of course, was inevitable.
‘I’m not spending money yet,’ Linn said. ‘Not till I’m sure I’ve got it to spend. Perhaps in another year or two, well, then I might consider it.’
Charlie’s schemes would have to wait. She would have some say in the farm’s affairs.
As it happened, however, Charlie did not have to wait long for the first of his schemes to bear fruit because in the autumn of that year the Triggs retired from Slipfields and went to live in Scampton and Charlie, who had so often borrowed Sam’s horses, was given the chance of buying them.
‘He says we can have them for thirty pounds. That’s too good a chance for us to miss. They’re past their prime, it’s true, but they’ll be good for a few years yet, to do what horse-work we have here.’
Linn, after some thought, agreed, and then Charlie said casually:
‘Seems to me a good idea if we buy those few sheep of Sam’s as well. He’s got twelve ewes and they’ve been with the ram. That’s just the right number to suit us here.’
Once again Linn agreed. Plainly the chance was too good to miss. Soon the two horses, Simon and Smutch, were grazing the orchard field at Stant and the twelve ewes, all in lamb, were grazing ‘the rough’ up by the woods.
‘So Charlie’s got his sheep at last?’ Robert said to Linn when they came.
‘Haven’t you noticed that Charlie always gets what he wants?’
‘Born lucky, that’s me,’ Charlie said.
He was proud of his little flock and prouder still when, the following spring, he had fifteen lively lambs in the fold. Only five of these were tups and they were sold in the summer sales. Charlie kept the ewe-lambs and his flock now numbered twenty-two.
‘Shall we be able to graze so many?’ Linn asked doubtfully.
But it seemed there was no problem there, for Slipfields as yet remained unsold, and Sam had given Charlie permission to let the sheep graze over his land.
‘What happens when Slipfields is sold?’
‘That new ley will be ready by then. There’s the orchard, too, to give them a bite. We’ve plenty of keep, be sure of that, and plenty of kale to help out in winter.’
Slipfields stood empty for a whole year. Nobody wanted land these days. Farming had become a dirty word. But then suddenly the place was sold, to a Major Alec Shaw and his wife who came, it was said, from somewhere near London.
Major Shaw was a tall, handsome man in his middle forties who was seen strolling over his fields with a walking-stick and binoculars, pausing every now and then to make notes on a scrap of paper. Mrs Shaw was slight and fair-haired and not too keen on visitors. When Charlie called on them and spoke to the major in the yard, Mrs Shaw kept out of the way, doing something in the barn, and then slipped quietly into the house when she thought Charlie wasn’t looking. But Shaw himself was friendly enough.
‘I’ve never farmed in my life before so I shall be keeping an eye on you and picking your brains when I get the chance.’
He intended to specialize in poultry, he said, and was starting off in a small way with a few bantams and guinea-fowl. Later he would go in for pigs and of course he would keep a cow or two.
‘I may be only a plain soldier, but I’ve read all the books on the subject, you know, so I daresay I shall muddle along.’
‘Well, you know where to come,’ Charlie said, ‘if you should ever need help.’
When he got home afterwards and Linn asked him about Alec Shaw, Charlie could find little to say.
‘He seems a nice enough sort of chap. Easy to talk to, anyway. I don’t know about his wife. She was busy and kept out of the way.’
‘Will they be good neighbours, d’you think?’
‘He won’t be anything like Sam Trigg.’
‘Surely you must have guessed that when you heard that he was an Army man.’
‘Yes, well,’ Charlie said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know … There was something about the chap that didn’t seem to ring quite true.’
Soon it became common talk in the district that ‘Major’ Shaw was a bit of a sham. His rank had been borrowed for show, people said, and some even doubted whether he had been in the Army at all. Charlie’s suspicions had been right, it seemed, and whenever he met Shaw afterwards every meeting confirmed them anew.
‘He’s a chancer and no mistake! The stories he tells would fill a book! He says he was chosen to escort the King and the Prince of Wales when they were out at the Front that time and once, according to what he says, he helped General Robertson to choose a horse!’
Shaw told Charlie he had fought at Mons and been recommended for the Military Cross. ‘Only for doing my duty, you know!’ But the Military Cross, as Charlie knew, had not been struck until 1915 and that was only one of the slips by which Shaw was revealed as a fraud.
‘Still,’ as Charlie said at home, ‘so long as he farms his land all right and does something about his thistles, that’s all we need worry about Major Shaw.’
Thistles flourished at Slipfields and all through that autumn and winter the seed drifted down over Charlie’s neat clean fallow lands so that when, in spring, he sowed his turnips and mangolds, the thistles sprang up as thick as thick and hoeing the rows was doubly hard. Once he complained about it to Shaw and the man was full of apologies.
‘I suppose I must seem slow to you, but I’ve drawn up a list of things that need doing, and I’m going through it systematically. The thing is, I need more stock ‒ I’m looking out for a few pigs ‒ but you know how it is nowadays, stretching out your capital.’
‘We can help you there,’ Charlie said. ‘We’ve got some weaners due to be sold in a week or two. You can buy a couple direct from us.’
‘Splendid! Splendid! Just the thing!’
Payment for the weaners was slow in coming. The whole of the summer passed by before Major Shaw remembered the debt and then only half of it was paid.
‘I’ll let you have the remainder,’ he said, ‘as soon as I get my bacon-money.’
The rest of the debt was never paid and Charlie perce
ived he had made a mistake. He never fell out with Shaw about it but any help he gave after that was merely in the form of advice.
‘What I need,’ Shaw said, ‘is a good strong man to give me a hand.’
‘That’s easy,’ Charlie said. ‘There are plenty of ’em wanting work.’
But here again, when Shaw had a man to do a week’s work, he paid only half his wages and promised the rest ‘at the end of the month’.
‘That’s the sort of man he is,’ Charlie said to Robert and Linn. ‘He owes money everywhere and no one will give him credit now. As for running the farm, well, it’d break Sam’s heart if he saw it now.’
‘I see Mrs Shaw on the bus sometimes, going in to the market,’ Linn said. ‘She never speaks to anyone and the other women say she’s stuck-up. But I don’t know. I think she’s ashamed. She never has anything much to sell. I don’t know how they manage to live.’
Charlie had met Mrs Shaw only once, and that was at the Hit and Miss, soon after she had come to Slipfields.
‘Shaw got her to play the piano. She was very good at it. She played every tune anyone asked for and we had a regular sing-song. Then Shaw got up and passed round his cap. He did it as though it was just as a joke but he scooped up the money right enough. His wife’s never been to the pub again. Like you say, I expect she’s ashamed.’
Charlie was as busy as ever these days. He had started draining the ten acre field and every spare moment he had was spent in digging new ditches, draining the water from the sour reedy land, into the winding brook below.
Linn was not interested in his schemes. She told him he was wasting his time. But he could not bear to see good land neglected, and all that year he persevered, inspired by the thought of the crops he would grow once the field was sweet and clean.
It was hard work ploughing these ten acres, for the turf was rough and tussocky and had lain undisturbed for many years, but it was all done eventually and the acid-green of the old grass gave way to the darkness of newly turned soil. Before the field could be sown, however, it needed a heavy dressing of lime, and Linn refused to co-operate.
‘It was your idea to plough up that land but its my money that has to be spent, buying the lime and the seed,’ she said, ‘and when it’s done where’s the point of it all?’
Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Page 18
