This time, when he called on Mrs Shaw, she was trying to work the pump in the yard. He could hear it as he walked up the fields and he knew straight away that something was wrong. The woman was merely exhausting herself. She thought by working the handle hard she could bring the pump to life for her but Charlie could tell that the valve had gone.
At sight of him she stood quite still. Her face was shiny with perspiration and she was too breathless to speak at first. She looked at him with tired acceptance, pushing at the strands of straight fair hair that clung about her forehead and eyes.
‘You seem to be having trouble,’ he said.
‘I think the well has run dry.’
‘No, there’s plenty of water there, but you need a new foot-valve.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I can tell by the sound.’
‘It means getting a plumber, then?’
‘No, I can do it,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve got a spare valve at home. I’ll nip back and get it. It won’t take long.’
When he returned with the spare valve, the woman was no longer in the yard, but was out in the paddock, feeding the hens. He removed the stone slab that covered the well and lowered himself into it until he was standing on the wooden beam set in the stonework at either side. Ten or twelve feet below, the water reflected a fragment of sky. He took a spanner from his belt and began loosening the joints on the pipe and while he was busy doing this Mrs Shaw returned to the yard and stood leaning over the well.
‘It’s terribly deep down there.’
‘Plenty of water, though, like I said.’
‘Supposing you were to fall in?’
‘I reckon I’d very likely drown.’
‘Why, can’t you swim?’ she asked, alarmed.
Charlie, as he worked with his spanner, cocked an eye at the water below.
‘I don’t think I should get very far. There’s not much room to strike out down there.’
‘I wish you’d answer me seriously. If you should slip and fall in, I want to know what I ought to do.’
‘You should send for the Fire Brigade straight away. There’s nothing like a dead man for ruining your water supply.’
‘I see you’re determined to have your joke.’
‘May as well ‒ while I’ve still got the chance!’
‘Can I do anything to help?’
‘Yes, you can take hold of this,’ he said.
He passed the pipe up to her and swung himself up out of the well. She watched while he replaced the valve and when he was in the well again she lowered the pipe down to him, staying to watch while he fastened the joints. Ten minutes later, having first primed the pump, Charlie was working the squeaky handle and water was gushing from the spout, filling the bucket underneath and overflowing into the trough.
Watching Helen Shaw’s face as the water came gushing out of the spout Charlie could see that, in trying to work the pump, she had spent the last of her strength and courage. At sight of the water she was almost in tears, and although she quickly recovered herself, glancing away and blinking her eyes, she could not hide what it meant to her to see the water flowing again.
‘How long had you been struggling with it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know! Hours!’ she said. She gave a little breathless laugh. ‘I tried yesterday and today. I kept on trying ‒. It was silly of me.’
‘You should have come and asked for help.’
‘After what I said last time?’
‘I reckon we’ll forget about that.’
‘You’re being more kind than I deserve.’
‘Got any more buckets to fill?’
‘I think I can manage now,’ she said.
‘I may as well do it, while I’m here.’
He worked at the pump for twenty minutes. He carried water to the boiler-house, where she was mixing swill for the pigs, and he filled every drinking-trough he could find. He then went to work on the muck in the yard, forking it into a wheelbarrow and wheeling it into the nearest field, and as he passed to and fro, he noted the things that needed doing. The sow in her pen had ten piglets and he saw that four of them were boars: they would have to be castrated soon. There was a sickly cow in calf in one of the old ruined sheds and it looked as though she would soon be calving. As for the poor scraggy fowls that roamed about all the over place, something would have to be done about them if they were to earn their keep, he thought.
But there was little stock on the farm and Mrs Shaw, showing him round afterwards, explained why.
‘I had to sell a lot of things. There were certain bills to be paid. But perhaps it’s just as well, after all, now that feed is hard to get.’
‘Well, so long as you can keep going all right …’ Charlie looked at the tumbledown fields. ‘But you’ll have the War Ag up here soon. I’m afraid they won’t like what they see.’
‘They’ve already been twice,’ she said. ‘I saw them coming and stayed in the house. They pushed some papers under the door but I haven’t dared to look at them ‒’
‘They’re bound to catch up with you in the end. Then what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’ She gave a shrug. ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’
The future, he saw, was too much for her. She lived her life one day at a time. And whatever despair she felt when alone, with him she was putting up a show, giving a smile as though to say, ‘What does it matter, anyhow?’ He wanted to ask about her husband but he felt that this would be tactless, so he merely took his leave of her and said in a casual, off-hand way:
‘I’ll come up again when I’ve got the time and give you a hand with this and that. But if you need me in a hurry, you’ve only got to come and ask.’
‘Yes. Thank you. You’re very kind.’ She took a purse from her apron-pocket and undid the clasp. ‘I haven’t paid you for the valve.’
‘I don’t remember how much it cost.’
‘Please. Do try. I’d rather pay.’
‘Call it a couple of shillings, then.’
She paid him and he went off home.
Linn had gone into town that morning. She came back at twelve o’clock.
‘Did you go and see Mrs Shaw?’
‘Yes, and a lucky thing I did.’ He told her about the faulty pump. ‘She was about done in with it all. It’s like you said, she really can’t cope. I reckon she’d have killed herself if she’d gone on trying to work that pump.’
‘What a good thing you went,’ Linn said.
‘What a good thing you sent me!’ he said.
Chapter Twelve
He was often at Slipfields after that. He went once or twice a week and did those things he had seen needed doing. He dealt with the boar piglets; helped the sickly cow to calve; and mended the doors on the sheds. Often he mucked out the pigs for her and once he cleaned the kitchen chimney, which was so terribly choked with soot that she had not lit a fire for six weeks. During that time she had had no hot food. She had lived on bread and cheese and milk.
‘I don’t think you eat well enough.’
‘Oh yes I do. I eat what I need.’
‘At least you’ll be able to cook something now, even if it’s only eggs.’
‘Yes, if the chickens lay for me.’
‘Ah, we must see about them!’ Charlie said. ‘Get them to buck up their ideas a bit. Don’t they know there’s a war on?’
Once she said to him, rather shyly, that since she could not afford to pay him for the work he did, she would like him to take two or three piglets, once they were of an age to be weaned.
‘I don’t want paying for what I do. An hour or two’s work! What is there in that?’
‘But you’ve got so much to do on your own farm and then to come up here as well ‒’
‘Poof!’ he said, dismissing it. ‘It’s nothing to a man like me!’
He was never shy with her. He already felt that he had her measure; knew how to deal with her independence and how to turn her objections
aside; and he found he could always make her laugh. Once he took his scythe with him, to cut the thistles in the fields; she saw him coming, a long way off, and when he arrived at the yard gate, she was there to open it, laughing at him as he passed through.
‘What’s the big joke?’ he asked.
‘You with that scythe!’
‘Old Father Time, that’s me,’ he said. ‘The end is in sight for those thistles of yours!’
Laughter transformed her pale thin face and sometimes he caught a fleeting glimpse of the beautiful girl she must have been before marriage and anxiety had brought her to her present state.
‘Do you ever hear from your husband?’ he asked, when he felt he knew her well enough.
‘Yes, I’ve had two letters,’ she said. ‘He’s staying in London, with some friends. He says he’s working for the Ministry. Intelligence work. Very hush-hush. He can’t tell me more than that, he says.’
‘Ah,’ Charlie said. ‘Yes. I see.’
Helen Shaw looked at him. Her eyes were a very clear blue.
‘It’s all a story, of course,’ she said. ‘I daresay you know what Alec is like. He lives in a world of make-believe.’
‘What’s he really doing, d’you think?’
‘Barman in a pub or club somewhere. That’s his usual stand-by.’
‘I suppose he’ll turn up here again one day?’
‘If I’m still here, I suppose he will.’
‘Why, are you planning to move?’ Charlie asked.
She gave a little hopeless shrug.
‘When the War Ag people catch up with me, I shall have no choice about it. I can’t farm this place as it ought to be farmed and they’ll turn me out neck and crop.’
‘It might not be as bad as that.’
But Charlie knew what she said was true. The W.A.E.C. had the power to requisition neglected land and evict the farmer at a month’s notice and it was only a question of time before Slipfields came under their scrutiny.
‘What’ll you do? Where will you go? Have you got any family?’
‘I’ve got an aunt in Hertfordshire. She might have me, for the rest of the war, and I would have to get a job.’
‘But you mean to stay, till they turn you out?’
‘I don’t know. I shall have to see.’ Again she shrugged and gave a smile. ‘I’ve lost the will to make plans,’ she said.
Sometimes as he worked, cutting the thistles, she would come and watch him. She would stand looking over the gate and he, as he moved from one clump to the next, would glance up and see her standing there. Then perhaps when he looked again she would have gone; he would hear the clatter of pails in the yard and the grunting and squealing of the pigs as she tipped their food into the trough; or he would hear the squawk of the hens as she chivvied them from their nests in the barn.
She, as she went about her chores, would hear him sharpening the blade of his scythe. The sound of it travelled down from the fields, wheep-whaup, wheep-whaup, wheep-whaup, echoing all around the yard and following her wherever she went. Charlie knew she could hear him; he would give the scythe an extra rub; and when at last he had made her glance up, he would wave to her and go on with his work.
By now he felt he knew her well and his feeling for her was one of pity. He was struck by the loneliness of the life she lived, stuck away up here on this farm, where she never really seemed to belong. And when he had finished his stint for the day he would stop and talk to her.
‘Have you heard from your husband lately?’
‘Yes, I had a post-card. He hopes I’m managing the farm all right.’
‘He should be here to see to it.’
‘Alec has always been like that. Always full of wonderful schemes for setting himself up in business ‒ usually with someone else’s money. Once it was a newspaper shop. Then it was a private hotel. Another time it was breeding dogs. But none of his schemes ever worked. We’ve cleared out of a dozen places, up and down the country, and we’ve left a trail of unpaid debts. Then he decided he wanted to farm … He pictured himself as a country squire …’
‘Where did he get the money from?’
‘He said he won it on a horse.’
‘Wasn’t it true?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t known what to believe since I married him fifteen years ago.’
‘What about his Army career?’
‘He was in the Army, for ten months. A second-lieutenant, in 1919. But there was some unpleasantness … Something to do with the mess funds … That was before I knew him and I only heard of it afterwards, from someone else. He told me, when I met him, that he had served all through the war and he’s kept up the story ever since.’
‘He’s not very good at it,’ Charlie said.
‘No, I know,’ she said with a smile, and then, looking at him, she said: ‘I suppose I’m being disloyal, talking about Alec like this?’
‘Sometimes it helps to talk,’ Charlie said.
They had been leaning on the gate. Now he moved and took up his scythe, placing it carefully over his shoulder, the blade pointing safely down behind.
‘Here I go! Old Father Time! Anno Domini, that’s me!’ He always tried to leave her with a smile on her lips. He hoped that his nonsense and his jokes, and the brief spell of companionship, would tide her over till he came again. She saw nobody but him. He was her only link with the world. Sometimes he talked about her to Linn.
‘Couldn’t you go up and see her? That’d make a change for her, having a woman to talk to sometimes.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Linn said, ‘if you think I’ll be welcome there.’
But she never went. There was never time.
‘I’ve got my hands full nowadays, filling in all these forms,’ she said.
But Charlie felt it was just an excuse.
‘You could make time if you really tried.’
One day when he went up to Slipfields Mrs Shaw had received a letter from the W.A.E.C..
‘They say they’re sending a man to see me at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning and if I’m not here to speak to him they are going to summons me.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that.’
‘And I’ve been avoiding thinking about it!’
‘What if I was to be here when he comes, as a neighbour, to give my advice?’
‘Do you think it would do any good?’
‘I don’t know. We’d have to see. We might be able to work something out, if you still want to stay here, that is.’ Charlie looked at her searchingly. ‘Do you want to stay?’ he asked.
‘Well!’ She gave a little laugh. ‘It is a roof over my head!’
‘Right, I’ll come along, then,’ he said.
When he was setting out for Slipfields, just before nine on Tuesday morning, Linn came and asked him to move the separator and butter churns out of the dairy because she was going to whitewash the walls.
‘I can’t do it now,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m just off to Slipfields to see Mrs Shaw. The War Ag man is coming this morning and I said I’d be there to see fair play.’
‘But it won’t take you more than ten minutes.’
‘Ten minutes will make me late. I said I’d be there on the dot at nine.’
‘Oh, very well, never mind.’
‘I promised, you see.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘I shan’t be gone long. I’ll move those things when I come back.’
‘Yes, all right.’
Linn, however, was impatient to start. She had already cleared the dairy out, removing everything she could carry, and had even mixed the bucket of whitewash. She looked at the separator and the churns, which stood in her way close to the wall, and made up her mind to move them herself.
Charlie, coming home at half-past ten, took her to task for what she had done.
‘Moving those great heavy things!’ he said. ‘Couldn’t you wait an hour or two?’
‘No, I wanted to get on.’
‘You might have hurt
yourself, doing that.’
‘I didn’t, however, as you see.’ Linn, slapping whitewash on to the wall, spoke to him over her shoulder. ‘What did the War Ag have to say? Are they turning Mrs Shaw out?’
‘No, I’ve fixed it up,’ Charlie said. ‘They’ll serve her with their cultivation orders but I shall do the work for her. The chap was quite agreeable and when it comes to seed and that they’ve got a deferred payment scheme. They’ll loan me a tractor, as before, and I shall start ploughing as soon as I can.’
Linn had stopped work and was looking at him. It was a while before she spoke.
‘Was that Mrs Shaw’s idea?’
‘No, it was mine. I’ve had it in mind for quite a time.’
‘Why didn’t you mention it?’
‘There didn’t seem any point until I knew what the chap had to say.’
‘What you really mean is that you wanted to get it all settled before finding out what I thought of it.’
‘Why, have you any objections, then?’
‘It’s late in the day to ask that now. You say you’ve already fixed it up. And if you can work both farms all right ‒’
‘Oh, yes, there’s no problem there. I shall have to have help, of course, but the War Ag will see to that. Why, with Slipfields and Stant put together, it’s only ninety acres in all. I can surely manage that!’
Charlie went off, whistling a tune, and she heard him busy about the yard. She dipped her brush into her bucket and slapped the whitewash on to the wall. Yet another decision had been taken and she had been left out of it. Her anger and resentment grew.
At the end of the morning, when she had finished her white-washing, she went out to the yard and began dragging a butter churn back into the dairy. Charlie saw and came running to help.
‘I told you to leave that job to me!’
‘I may as well get used to doing things for myself,’ she said, ‘seeing you’re going to be so busy at Slipfields soon.’
Charlie stood still, his hands on the churn, looking at her with a sharp frown.
‘I shall never be so busy,’ he said, ‘that I can’t do things for my own wife.’
‘Oh, a very pretty speech indeed!’
Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Page 21
