The Land Endures (The Apple Tree Saga Book 4)

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘Why were you running down the hill?’

  ‘I wanted to run away from home.’

  ‘Did something happen to you there?’

  ‘Yes, it was horrible,’ Emma said.

  ‘Won’t you tell me what it was?’

  ‘The cow was after me,’ Emma said.

  Betony, smiling, turned away. She busied herself with the iodine.

  ‘Well, it’s always as well to keep out of their way, especially if they happen to have calves.’

  ‘She didn’t have a calf, she was dead,’ Emma said. ‘She was all black and slimy and she smelt bad.’

  ‘Oh! That is horrible!’ Betony said. She folded the lint and put it away. ‘But dead cows don’t chase you over the hill.’

  ‘I thought she was going to,’ Emma said.

  Soon, with her face and hands washed clean, and her hair put to rights, brushed and combed, she appeared less of a wild wan waif, and Betony, looking into her eyes, saw there was no real terror there. Indeed, Emma sitting by the fire, enjoying biscuits and warm milk, while her muddy boots dried in the hearth, looked on the whole well-pleased with herself, as Beth, coming in from the garden, remarked. ‘No bones broken nor nothing like that?’

  ‘Cuts and scratches, mostly, that’s all, and a bit of a fright.’

  ‘And rather enjoying it, I should say.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps,’ Betony said.

  Emma’s only tragedy, now, was the state of her clothes. Whenever she glanced down at them and saw the terrible muddy stains, she wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  ‘I need a clean frock and pinafore.’

  ‘I can’t help you there, I’m afraid. There’s nothing in the house small enough.’

  ‘Aunt Doe will see to it, when I get home.’

  ‘I’ll walk back with you,’ Betony said. ‘They will be wondering where you’ve got to.’

  ‘Oh, they never worry,’ Emma said.

  But the child had been missed for an hour or more, and Stephen was out looking for her. He came across the turnip field as Betony and Emma walked into the yard. He spoke to the child with severity.

  ‘Where have you been, all this time? You promised Aunt Doe you’d stay within call.’ And, to Betony, he said: ‘Where did you find the wretched child?’

  ‘It was one of those days for running away from home, apparently and Emma got as far as Cobbs.’

  ‘It might be one of those days when somebody got a smacked bottom,’ he said. ‘It seems to me it’s what they deserve.’

  Emma was quite unmoved by this threat. She showed him the mud and dirt on her clothes.

  ‘I need clean everything!’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I can see you do, my girl. You’d better go in to your Aunt Doe and say you’re sorry for causing her so much anxiety.’

  The child went skipping into the house. Never once did she glance back at them. She was intent on the need for clean clothes. Stephen looked at Betony.

  ‘It seems my children are determined to be a nuisance to you. You’ll be sick of us Waymans before long. What’s all this about running away from home?’

  ‘It was mostly to do with seeing a dead cow, I believe.’

  ‘Damn and blast!’ Stephen said. ‘All the farm to play about in and that child has to choose the bottom yard. I thought the carcass was safe enough there.’

  ‘Surely it would have been safer still if it had been buried?’ Betony said.

  ‘I can see what you must think of us, Miss Izzard, and of course you’re quite right. The cow died two days ago but what with our landwork being behind ‒’

  ‘And a shortage of labour perhaps?’

  ‘Shortage? No. I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘I heard you’d got rid of one of your men.’

  ‘Ah. Yes, I see. That was Morton George.’ Looking at her, he considered her. He knew her well enough by now to guess what was passing in her mind. ‘I suppose you’ve heard gossip of some kind. Victimization. Is that it?’

  ‘George was a member of the union, I understand.’

  ‘That’s not the reason he was dismissed.’

  ‘He thought it was,’ Betony said.

  ‘Did you know him?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘Only slightly, I must admit, but one of his boys was in my class.’

  ‘Do you know what kind of man he is?’

  ‘Surely no man, whatever his shortcomings, deserves dismissal at such times as these?’

  ‘The times are bad for all of us, not just for those like Morton George.’

  ‘You can’t deny it’s worse for them?’

  ‘That dead cow,’ Stephen said. ‘It was Morton George who did that. He poisoned her by giving her yew.’

  There was a pause. She frowned at him.

  ‘Have you any proof of that?’

  ‘Enough to satisfy myself. I don’t have to satisfy anyone else.’

  He could see from her face what impression his words had made on her. She thought him high-handed, that much was plain.

  ‘Have you got a few minutes to spare?’

  ‘What for?’ Betony asked.

  ‘I’d like to show you something,’ he said.

  He took her to Morton George’s empty cottage and showed her the damage that had been done there. He showed her the fruit trees and lilacs cut down, lying on the grass in the back garden.

  ‘I know it’s no proof that he poisoned my cow, but it’s proof of the kind of man he is. And there’s the yew by the gable there. The cow couldn’t get at it by herself.’

  ‘I would never have thought,’ Betony said, ‘that a man could stoop to such spitefulness.’

  ‘The cottage will take some time to put right. I’ve been meaning to come along to your place, to ask if your father will do the repairs. I shan’t take another man on just yet, but when I do he will want the cottage.’

  ‘My father will see to it certainly. I’ll ask him to come and call on you.’ Betony, turning, met Stephen’s gaze. ‘I’d like to apologize,’ she said. ‘I was speaking in ignorance, defending Morton George as I did.’

  ‘You are a champion of the unemployed, Miss Izzard, and it means the employers get all your blows. But not every farmer is a despot, you know, and I’d like to think I’d convinced you of that.’

  He looked at her and she smiled at him. Her hair in the sunlight was smooth and bright; her eyes reflected the spring-blue sky. He found he enjoyed looking at her. There was serenity in her face. He stood with his hands in his jacket pockets and watched her move away from him, walking about the overgrown garden, among the fallen apple trees.

  ‘It may seem unfair, bringing you here to see all this, when George is not here to defend himself, but ‒ I happen to mind what people think of me.’

  ‘Will you try and prosecute him?’

  ‘I doubt if he could ever be found. He’ll take good care to cover his tracks. And he certainly won’t be writing to ask me for a reference!’

  Together they walked across the pasture and out through the gate into the lane. In the ten acre field on the other side, Tupper and Hopson were drilling oats, and Tupper’s quiet voice could be heard as he spoke to his team. The air was full of the scent of spring.

  ‘Will you come to the house for a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Betony said. ‘I’ve got a jumble sale after lunch. It’s high time I was getting home.’

  ‘Then you’d better take the right of way. It’ll save you half a mile from here. I’ll come with you as far as Blake’s Wood.’

  The right of way lay across part of Challoner’s land, crossing two pastures and skirting a coppice. Betony had not been there since childhood.

  ‘I thought Mr Challoner had closed this path.’

  ‘He’s tried to close it a couple of times. He doesn’t like people crossing his fields. But the parish council directed him to take his barbed wire down.’

  John Challoner, however, determined to discourage ‘trespassers’, had allowed his hedges to overgrow the stiles,
and Stephen, with a stick, had to beat aside the brambles and briars before he and Betony could climb over. Even so, a sharp briar caught her face and a spot of bright blood squeezed from the scratch, like a glistening red jewel on her cheek. Stephen watched her brush it away.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t such a good idea after all, taking the short cut, was it? I must speak to my neighbour about his thorns. If he doesn’t cut them back, the parish council will do it for him, and he won’t like them trampling over his land.’

  Betony laughed.

  ‘It must be useful, having practised the law. Do you ever miss it at all?’

  ‘No, not really. I always wanted to farm. I went in for the law to please my father.’

  The second field they had to cross was steeply humped in the middle. Once they were over the top of the hump, they were walking beside a fenced coppice, which ran down to the foot of the slope and filled the whole of the hollow below. There were horses in this field: Challoner’s hunters, his pride and joy; and as Stephen and Betony walked down the path skirting the coppice, two of these horses, a black and a roan, came thundering down the slope behind them.

  Stephen knew the black horse: he had a bad name for tormenting his fellows; and today his victim was the roan. Both horses were highly excited, the black with devilment, the roan with fear, and they came careering down the slope, ears back and eyes rolling and the breath coming in visible spurts out of their widely dilated nostrils.

  Stephen and Betony turned to face them. Caught as they were in the angle formed by the fenced-off coppice, they had no room to step aside. The horses bore down on them at a gallop, sweat and foam splattering off them and bits of turf flying up from their heels. Betony stood, paralysed, sure that she and the man beside her were going to be trampled under the hooves. But Stephen stepped forward a pace or two and spread his arms in front of the horses. He spoke to them in a loud voice.

  ‘Whoa, there! Steady, now! Get over, you brutes! Whoa! Whoa!’

  His last words were lost in the thundering of hooves. Then, a miracle, the horses were past, veering away at the last instant. They passed so close in their headlong career that as Stephen stepped back a pace, one flying hoof snicked the shin of his boot, and the roan’s tail caught him full in the face. Drawing breath, he watched them go. They gradually slowed as they circled back up the slope again and in a moment they had stopped, leaning over the fence of the coppice to pull at the leaves on the hazel trees. The roan kept a watchful eye on the black but otherwise, as they browsed together, they looked the picture of peacefulness.

  ‘Whew! That was close!’ Stephen said. He wiped away the dirt that had spattered his face and turned towards Betony. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m all right. Or I think I am!’ She gave a little tremulous laugh. Her voice was not quite under control. ‘But I really thought … just for an instant … that we were both going to be killed.’

  ‘No thanks to Challoner that we’re not!’ Stephen said angrily. ‘He’s no right to keep such mischievous brutes on this public right of way. I must certainly see him and warn him about it.’ Pausing, he looked more closely at her. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ He put out a hand and touched her arm.

  ‘Except that my bones seem to have melted, yes, thanks, I’m fine,’ Betony said.

  Her voice was perfectly steady now, and she gave another self-mocking laugh. She had passed from a moment when violent death seemed inevitable to a moment when she was immortal again. But only the pallor in her face showed what that moment had done to her. Otherwise she was herself. Her eyes were steady, calm, amused. Stephen admired her self-control.

  He opened the gate and they passed through it into the wood. There were primroses growing under the trees, and the pathway was starred with celandines. The wood smelt of moss and new green growth, and the sunlight, finding its way through the scrub oak and ash and the hazel boughs, lit the greenness on the ground.

  ‘This business of Emma running away from home …’

  ‘I don’t think it’s very serious.’

  ‘Not another example of my neglect?’

  ‘I retracted that charge, if you remember.’

  ‘I’m not sure that it wasn’t deserved. The child does wander about a lot. I must keep a closer watch on her.’

  ‘Remembering my own childhood, I know how difficult that can be. I was always running away from home. I never got any further than Emma did today, but it must have been very worrying for my parents, all the same.’

  They glanced at each other, silent a while, and the sunlight, shining through the straight ash poles, flickered on their faces as they walked. They came out at the end of the wood and leant together over the gate, looking down on the straggling village.

  ‘You’re no longer given to running away from home, Miss Izzard? You seem pretty settled nowadays.’

  ‘Too much so,’ Betony said. ‘I’ve hardly been away from home since the war ended. I’ve been at the school for four years.’

  ‘Is that such a bad thing?’

  ‘Sometimes I feel perhaps it’s wrong to be settled so comfortably into one’s rut.’

  ‘I hope you’re not a puritan, Miss Izzard, courting discomfort for the good of your soul.’

  ‘You make it sound reprehensible.’

  ‘I don’t see why life should not be enjoyed.’

  He opened the gate and she passed through. He closed it again, remaining inside. This was as far as he meant to go.

  ‘I’ll call at Outlands on my way back and see Challoner about those horses. I’ll make it quite clear that they gave us a fright. Thank you for bringing Emma back. It was kind of you to take so much trouble.’

  ‘I enjoyed the walk,’ Betony said.

  He watched her until she had gone from sight.

  In the schoolroom, when Betony arrived after lunch, the stalls had already been set up and money was already changing hands. Her sister Janie, selling produce from her own dairy, was doing the briskest trade of all.

  ‘Thank goodness you’ve come! I really can’t manage both stalls at once. You’re nearly twenty minutes late.’

  Betony had a rummage stall. Everything on it was priced at twopence. The coppers rattled into the tin, and she was kept busy until four o’clock. The afternoon’s sale raised four pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence.

  ‘Ah, well, every little helps!’ said one of the stall-holders cheerfully. ‘We shall have our parish hall by the time I’m eighty!’

  Afterwards tea was served from a big copper urn. Betony and Janie sat together, drinking out of enamelled mugs. Janie looked at Betony’s hair.

  ‘Isn’t it time you had it cut?’

  ‘Whatever for?’ Betony said.

  ‘Nobody wears it long these days.’

  ‘Oh, yes, they do,’ Betony said, looking around her at the other women in the room. ‘I can see five or six at least.’

  ‘So old-fashioned you are still!’

  ‘Am I? Yes, perhaps I am.’ Betony, although the elder of the two, was used to Janie’s criticisms. She listened to them and laughed them off. ‘I certainly can’t compete with you.’ Betony was not much interested in fashion. She took trouble with her clothes, but once they were on she forgot about them. As for her thick straight flaxen hair: her mother had coiled it into a bun for her on the day she had left school, and she had worn it like that ever since.

  ‘That was ages ago,’ Janie said. ‘Aren’t you ever going to change it?’

  Janie herself was passionately interested in fashion. ‘I may be a farmer’s wife but I don’t have to look like one!’ she would say. ‘Besides, Martin likes me to look nice.’ Janie had been married for ten years. She felt sorry for Betony.

  ‘It’s high time you found yourself a husband. He’d soon make you mend your ways.’

  ‘Would he indeed!’ Betony said.

  ‘Haven’t you ever thought of it?’

  ‘Not in so many words, no. Not since breaking wi
th Michael, that is.’

  ‘Then it’s high time you did!’

  ‘I’m perfectly happy as I am.’

  ‘You certainly look it, I must admit.’

  It was something Janie could not understand. Her husband and children were everything to her. To be twenty-eight, as Betony was, and not yet married! ‒ How could she bear such a wasted life?

  ‘Mother once said to Dad that you’d find it difficult to give yourself heart and soul to a man.’

  ‘How do you know she said such a thing?’

  ‘Because Dad mentioned it to me, that’s how.’ Janie drank the last of her tea. ‘I’ve often wondered if it’s true.’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought.’ Whether it was true or not, Betony was reluctant to discuss it with her sister, close in affection though they were. ‘Mother says a lot of things.’

  ‘Surely you want to get married some time? You’ll leave it too late if you don’t watch out.’

  ‘When you’ve found someone suitable, I promise to give it my consideration.’

  ‘I wish you’d be serious once in a while.’

  ‘I’m getting myself another cup of tea. Shall I get you one as well?’

  Janie, with a look that admitted defeat, handed Betony her empty mug.

  The school reopened on April the twenty-fifth. The weather had turned bad again, and every morning the two rooms were filled with the smell of wet boots and overcoats drying around the two stoves. The sky was so dark that the lamps were kept burning all through the day. It was just like wintertime. Emma, coming down the lane through the rainy darkness, liked to see the lights shining out from the schoolroom windows, and would run the last two hundred yards, drawn by the brightness and bustle within.

  ‘No one is to sit down in their places until they have shed their wet boots or shoes,’ Miss Vernon would say every morning, and there was always much jostling and noise before her order had been obeyed.

  ‘Whew! What a smell!’ said Florrie Ricks, holding her nose between finger and thumb, and the other children all did the same.

  But Emma, although she held her nose with the rest, rather enjoyed the smell of hot wet wool and mackintosh and leather drying by the stove. She liked the bustle and noise of the wet mornings; the flickering of the lamps and the smell of the oil; the red glow of coals in the iron stove and the mugs of cocoa, steaming hot, handed out by Miss Vernon.