The Land Endures (The Apple Tree Saga Book 4)

by Mary E. Pearce

  It was difficult for the children to settle down after these preliminaries. They were restless; excited; full of naughty glee. Three little boys, in the dinner-hour, hid Miss Vernon’s pinafore behind the stove-pipe, where she discovered it, black with soot. They were sent to Miss Izzard, who kept them in for ten minutes of their playtime, sitting with their hands on their heads.

  The next day, Miss Vernon’s galoshes were filled with mud, and the two culprits, Emma Wayman and Winnie Aston, received the same punishment. And, on yet another day, in the middle of a scripture lesson, Emma leant across to Betty Trennam and yanked her hair-ribbon undone. Miss Vernon witnessed this incident, and Emma spent the afternoon break sitting under Miss Izzard’s eye, writing out twenty times. ‘I must behave better in class.’ The following morning, Emma threw a lump of plasticine at Festubert Wilkes, and was sent to Miss Izzard yet again.

  Betony looked at the dark-eyed child standing before her and wondered at this burst of naughtiness.

  ‘Well, Emma? You’re always in trouble nowadays. Why is that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Emma said. She stared at the watch on Betony’s bosom.

  ‘This is the third time you’ve been sent to me in a week. Aren’t you ashamed?’

  Emma dutifully hung her head.

  ‘Well, run along, then!’ Betony said. ‘Go back to Miss Vernon and be a good girl.’

  Emma’s head came up at once.

  ‘Aren’t you going to keep me in?’

  ‘No, not today. It’s stopped raining for once in a while and you will be better taking your playtime out of doors.’

  Emma went off, out to the playground, and stood with her feet in a dirty puddle. Nobody came to scold her for it. After a while she moved away.

  May was almost as wet as April. Landwork was halted everywhere. Rootseed rotted in the waterlogged ground and young cabbages, yellow-leaved, were washed out into the furrows, which ran like rillets continuously. The Derrent brook broke its banks again and many people’s homes were flooded; part of the road at Slings Dip had been washed away; and, at the little village school, fires were still being lit in the mornings, six weeks after they had usually stopped.

  On May the twenty-sixth, the school celebrated Empire Day, and the morning began without rain. In Miss Vernon’s room, after prayers, each child in Standard I was given a sheet of paper and told to paint a union jack, copying the flag draped over the blackboard.

  ‘Don’t try to hurry. There’s plenty of time. Be sure to let each colour dry before commencing with another.’

  In spite of the warning, Emma’s colours ran together, and the more she tried to put matters right, the worse mess she made on her paper. The smaller children were using crayons. Even their work was better than hers. She hid her flag inside her desk.

  Miss Vernon stood before the class.

  ‘Is your paint dry, Standard I? Then take the two pins I’ve given you and pin your union jacks to your chests. When you’ve all done that, you can help the little ones with theirs.’

  The children became extremely busy; all except Emma, who sat quite still.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Miss Vernon asked, coming and standing beside the desk. ‘Why aren’t you wearing your union jack?’

  ‘It’s gone all runny,’ Emma said.

  ‘And whose fault is that, if I might ask?’

  ‘It’s her own silly fault,’ said Florrie Ricks.

  ‘Show it to me, Emma, please.’

  Emma took her painting from the desk and laid it on top. She could not bear to see it. She looked away.

  ‘Stand up, Emma. I’ll pin it on.’

  Emma stood up, her face hot and red. Miss Vernon pinned the flag to her chest. The other children were looking at her.

  ‘There! It’s not so bad as all that. Now get into line, everyone, and march out of the school in an orderly fashion.’

  But Emma, looking down at her union jack, knew it was very bad indeed, and as she marched out in her line, she removed the odious thing from her chest and tore it into pieces. She dropped them into the wastepaper basket as she passed.

  Miss Vernon was cross. Emma was taken before the head and asked to give an account of herself, while the rest of the school marked time in the playground, under a sky that threatened rain.

  ‘Why did you tear up your union jack?’

  ‘It had gone all runny,’ Emma said. ‘It’s a silly idea, anyway. Who wants to wear a union jack?’

  The upper standards were wearing rosettes. They were beautiful, Emma thought.

  ‘Well, get into line,’ Betony said, ‘and when we all get to the green, I shall expect to hear you singing all the more heartily, to make up for not wearing your red white and blue.’

  Thus the school, as always on Empire Day, marched out to the green and assembled there. They heard the vicar’s brief address and sang ‘O God, our help in ages past’. They then saluted the union jack, hanging bedraggled on its pole, and marched back into school again, just in time to escape the rain.

  Afterwards, when the children had all gone home, Sue Vernon discussed Emma’s behaviour with Betony.

  ‘All this naughtiness!’ she said. ‘It’s only to gain attention, you know. Your attention, to be precise. It will be better in future, I think, if I deal with her bad behaviour myself instead of sending her to you.’

  Betony, however, disagreed.

  ‘I think it’s time she came into my class. She’s forward enough for Standard II. She’d be moving up anyway next term.’

  ‘But that’s exactly what she wants. It’s most unwise to give in to her.’

  ‘Sometimes children are much improved by getting what they want,’ Betony said.

  ‘Well, it’s your decision, of course,’ Sue said. ‘You are the head.’

  Privately, she thought her own thoughts. Was Miss Izzard a bit of a snob, favouring this gentleman farmer’s daughter? Or were her motives more personal? She seemed on good terms with Stephen Wayman. Perhaps there was something brewing there.

  The following morning, when school began, Emma had a place in the big room, with the four boys and seven girls of Standard II. She shared a desk with Hilary Slewton. Hilary helped her to do her sums.

  At home, when Emma announced her news, the family made a great fuss of her.

  ‘Why have you been moved up? Is it because you’re a good scholar?’

  ‘No, it’s because I was naughty,’ Emma said.

  Joanna and the boys laughed at her.

  ‘It must be a jolly funny school!’

  ‘Trust our Emma to be the opposite of everyone else!’

  ‘Our little Emma naughty?’ said Chris. ‘I don’t believe a word of it!’

  ‘I was naughty,’ Emma said. ‘I did all sorts of naughty things.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry to hear it,’ Stephen said. He frowned at this youngest child of his. ‘I shall have to speak to Miss Izzard about you.’

  But, meeting Betony soon afterwards, he heard that Emma was now a model pupil.

  ‘She gives me no trouble,’ Betony said.

  Although promoted to the big room, Emma did not forget Robert Mercybright, left behind in the infants’ class. Sometimes she sought him out in the playground and gave him a sweet or a piece of chocolate or half the banana she had brought for her elevenses. One day, as they sat together on the toolshed step, she gave him a share of the small blue-black berries she had taken from a bush in the garden at home. Robert, on chewing them, made a face. He gave a shudder and spat them out.

  ‘Aren’t they nice?’ Emma said. She tried one herself and found it bitter. It made a roughness on her tongue. She too spat it out. ‘Oh, they’re nasty, horrid things! Here, have a peppermint instead, and that’ll take away the taste.’

  That afternoon Robert was sick. His mother was sent for, from Mrs Frail’s, and came at once to take him home. By then his lips were swollen inside, and he complained that his tongue was sore.

  ‘What have you been eating?’ Linn demanded.r />
  Robert was silent, looking at her. His face was pale and miserable.

  ‘Did you eat anything?’ Betony asked. She knew that Emma gave him sweets. ‘Don’t be afraid to tell us, Rob.’

  They were standing together in the school porch. The boy was reluctant to answer them, but the story of the berries came out at last, and Betony went to fetch Emma.

  ‘What sort of berries were they that you gave Robert to eat?’

  ‘They came off a jumper bush,’ Emma said.

  ‘Jumper bush? What is that?’

  ‘It’s just a bush in the garden at home. I picked them on the way to school.’

  ‘What did they look like?’ Betony asked.

  Emma put her hand into her pinafore pocket and took out the berries remaining there. She dropped them into Betony’s palm.

  ‘Juniper berries! Thank goodness for that!’ Betony showed them in her palm to Linn. ‘You’ve nothing to worry about,’ she said. ‘They’re perfectly harmless. Just bitter, that’s all.’

  ‘How can you be so sure of that?’

  ‘For one thing, they’re used in flavouring gin. For another, I’ve chewed them up myself – long ago, when I was a child. They taste nasty but they do no harm.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say they were harmless, myself. Look at the state of Robert’s mouth. And you say he was sick as well.’ Linn, in her anxiety for her son, rounded angrily on Emma. ‘How dare you make him eat things like that? You’re a very wicked, naughty girl!’ She disliked the child’s remote, calm gaze. She wanted to see some fear in her; some awareness of her own wrongdoing. ‘His lips are all swollen and sore inside. You should be ashamed, a girl of your age, forcing a little boy like Robert to eat bad things that make him ill.’

  ‘I wasn’t sick,’ Emma said. ‘My lips aren’t swollen inside.’

  ‘Perhaps if they were,’ Linn replied, ‘you might be a bit more sorry, child!’

  Emma looked at the little boy, leaning against his mother’s side. Then she looked up at Betony.

  ‘Is he going to die?’ she asked.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Betony said. ‘Juniper berries aren’t poisonous. You’ve just heard me say they’re not. But I want you to promise me, faithfully, that you won’t ever eat strange berries again or give them to other children, either.’

  ‘We didn’t eat them. We spat them out.’

  ‘Will you promise me, anyway?’

  ‘Yes, I promise,’ Emma said.

  Betony sent her back to the classroom.

  ‘She doesn’t care twopence, does she?’ Linn said. ‘Doesn’t she realize the harm she could have done?’

  ‘She’s only a child,’ Betony said.

  Linn was now preparing to leave. She laid a hand on Robert’s forehead.

  ‘I shall take him to the doctor before I go home. I’d sooner be on the safe side. I don’t like the look of his mouth at all.’

  ‘Yes, I should do that,’ Betony said. ‘It will set your mind at rest. But I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. He’s beginning to look better already.’

  She was sufficiently anxious, however, to walk over to Lilac Cottage that evening and find out how the little boy was. She found him in the garden, watching his grandfather Mercybright, who was up on a ladder, repairing the roof. The soreness and swelling had gone from his mouth; he had eaten his tea without being sick; and there was some colour in his cheeks. The doctor had said there was no reason for concern.

  ‘Well, Robert!’ Betony said. ‘I’m glad to see you’re yourself again.’

  ‘Linn fusses too much,’ Jack Mercybright said. ‘She wraps the boy in cotton wool. If he comes to no worse harm than that, he’ll be a lot more lucky than most.’

  Linn herself appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Will you come in for a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, thank you, I’ll be on my way.’

  But Betony paused long enough to gaze up at the sunken roof, where four or five of the tiles were missing, leaving a gap some two feet wide. Jack was inserting a piece of tin, edging it under the upper tiles, spreading it over the lower ones. Elsewhere the roof was similarly patched.

  ‘Won’t Mr Challoner do those repairs?’

  ‘I’ve been asking him since the year dot.’

  ‘At least he could let you have some tiles.’

  ‘The laths is gone under this tin. The whole roof’s as daddocky as a sponge. We shall have it in on us one of these days. Challoner’s got no money to spare for roofs. It goes on his hunters and his motor cars and paying his tailor to make him look thin.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Betony said.

  And she walked away from the damp, dilapidated cottage, angry at the truth of what Jack said.

  Next she went to Holland Farm. Aunt Doe answered the door and Betony told her about the berries.

  ‘I thought I ought to warn you,’ she said, ‘in case Emma suffers some ill-effects.’

  ‘Silly child! She ought to know better!’ Aunt Doe said. ‘She certainly hasn’t been sick so far. Is the little boy all right?’

  ‘Right as rain now,’ Betony said.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to come. Emma’s gone with her brothers up to the woods. Will you come in for a little while?’

  ‘No, thank you, I’m on my way home.’

  ‘Stephen’s over in the barn there. He’s doctoring a sick cow. Won’t you wait while I fetch him in?’

  ‘No, please, don’t call him away. I really must be getting home.’

  On her way back across the yard, she heard a rustling in the straw in the barn, and the quick loud snorting of a cow in distress. She heard Stephen’s voice as he spoke to it; soothing it; calming it down. For a moment she paused, listening to him, thinking that perhaps she would look in on him after all. Then some strange shyness came over her. She had second thoughts and went on her way.

  Chapter Eleven

  That summer was the wettest for thirty-six years. In Chepsworth, in June, the three rivers overflowed and the town was flooded. Swans swam down the High Street and people went to and fro in punts. Many roads were badly damaged, and part of the railway embankment collapsed. The agricultural show had to be cancelled, for the first time in its history. On every farm throughout the district there was deep gloom. Haymaking was held back for weeks on end. Corn crops were beaten down and lodged.

  ‘You were a lot wiser than me, cutting back on your corn crops so hard as you did,’ John Challoner said to Stephen. ‘The wet won’t harm you the way it will me. I shall damn well go bankrupt if this goes on. I’ll be coming to ask you for a loan!’

  This was his refrain all through the summer. Stephen grew somewhat irritated. Once he said something sharp in reply.

  ‘You could always send your new billiard table back!’

  ‘Ah, you think that’s extravagant, I suppose? But damn it, man, you wouldn’t deny me a bit of fun?’

  Stephen said nothing more. It was none of his business, obviously. But Challoner, spending up to the hilt, was a worried man, and he took it out on his labourers. The bad weather made loafers of them. Why should he pay them a full wage just to watch the rain from inside his barn?

  ‘They’ve got to live, whether it rains or not,’ Stephen said.

  ‘So have I!’ Challoner said.

  He reduced his men’s wages yet again. He paid them twenty-four-and-six. In this he was ignoring the recommendations of the local Conciliation Committee, but he knew they had no power as a body. He scarcely gave them a passing thought.

  ‘Another flaming cut in our pay?’ said Bill Mayle, when pay-day came.

  There was a seething among the men. They crowded close against Challoner’s desk.

  ‘You ent playing fair with us, master. It ent our fault the weather’s bad.’

  ‘Twenty-four-and-six! Hell! How’m I going to feed six kids?’

  ‘It ent even enough to starve on, by God!’

  ‘I’ve got a sick wife at home. It’ll just about kill her when she hears about this!’<
br />
  ‘If you cut our wages much more, Mr Challoner, you’ll soon be paying us in threepenny bits!’

  There was a double barb in this, for Challoner carried a collection of silver threepenny pieces in his waistcoat pocket, and would dole them out, when the mood took him, to any children he happened to meet. He made himself popular in this way. There was always someone to speak well of him.

  ‘That’s enough of your lip, Cox!’ he said. ‘If you don’t like it, you know what to do. There’s plenty of men only too willing to step into your shoes for that wage.’

  ‘How are we supposed to live?’

  ‘You’ll have to cut down a bit, that’s all.’

  ‘Ah, we’ll have to cut down on the luxuries, such as food and drink!’ said Jack Mercybright, witheringly.

  ‘That’ll be the day!’ Challoner said. ‘You’re no stranger to a pint pot!’

  ‘I’m a stranger to a decent living wage.’

  Later that day, when Jack left work, five of his mates were at the farm gate, waiting to have a word with him. Two of these were union men. They were keen for Jack to join.

  ‘I’m reporting this cut in our wages,’ said Cox. ‘I’m going along this afternoon to see Harry Davids straight away.’

  ‘What good’ll that do?’ Jack asked.

  ‘If the union was stronger, we’d soon get things done. There’s talk of the Wages Board coming back. We shall press for that at the next meeting. Why don’t you join us? We need your sort.’

  Jack merely shrugged his way through the group.

  ‘I prefer to fight my own battles.’

  ‘Ah, fight ’em and lose ’em!’ Cox retorted scornfully.

  Jack took no notice, but walked on. His bad knee, injured more than forty years before, gave him pain when the weather was wet. His only thought was to get home.

  Linn, when she put his supper in front of him, saw at once that something was wrong.

  ‘Another Irishman’s rise this week!’ He plonked his money down on the table. ‘The way things are going with Challoner, I reckon we’ll soon be paying him for the privilege of slaving on his land!’