Lucifer Before Sunrise (17 page)

There was a lot of charlock with the oats. The Island Fortress was having a lean time, and all kinds of weed-seed were now being sold and eagerly bought, for cage-bird feed. Phillip built the
oat
-
stack
by the Duck Decoy, Mr. Gladstone Cogney having confirmed his promise to come and thresh in September, before the seasonal October rains made the track under the Meadow Wood impassable for his fifteen-ton steam-engine. They needed the oats to feed, through the winter months, three horses, sixty head of horned stock including ten cows, and fifty ewes due to lamb in January.

*

At the Corn Market the following Saturday, Phillip met his immediate neighbour, Charles Box. He had always envied Charles Box as a real farmer, on account of his equable and solid
appearance
. Whenever he saw or thought of Charles Box he remembered those several centuries of farming blood in his veins. Was Charles Box not stoical, he himself but an electric hare? Phillip was
surprise
d when Charles Box said to him, “I've come here chiefly to get away from the harvest,” for that was the first awareness in his farming career that his own reactions to all that farming entails in suspense and strain were not necessarily those of an incompetent misfit. He replied to Charles Box, with whom he was on terms of a mutually reserved geniality, “What does a farmer do when the steward does not agree with his orders?”

“He does what I do, gives his orders, then turns his back on his steward and walks away,” replied Charles Box, who thereupon walked away from Phillip and further possible questions about war-time farming.

When Luke and Boy Billy had been asked to cut the thin Steep barley, Phillip had told them specially to avoid the precipitous slope by the walnut tree. He explained to both that they must not damage, with ‘scrapping' wheels, the clover plants that were not very strongly established on those steep chalky places.

“The barley there should be scythed,” he told both of them together, lest there be further misunderstanding. “Leave the barley around and below on the hump,” he repeated.

The next day, a Sunday, he intended to take a busman's holiday and graze forty-nine bullocks on the narrow strip of grass between the coastal road and the river. The land was his, he had bought it with the farm. The idea was that stock should eat down the rough stuff, after which he would broadcast clover and lucerne seed to improve the feeding value. Every little pightle or parcel of land was needed to grow food.

Recently he had, with Peter and David, replaced the rotten and fallen posts and rusty wire which enclosed the narrow, steep, and crescent-shaped strip about half-a-mile long. He didn't have much
hope of this keeping people out, but it was as well to enclose what might otherwise, after twenty years, be claimed as common land. What he didn't foresee was that the top wire of the fence would be sat upon by soldiers from the anti-aircraft camp, until many of the posts were either broken or pulled aslant.

Phillip and the small boys drove the bullocks to the river verges. The stock was happily grazing when he crossed river and meadow to take a look at that part of the Steep which he had asked to be cut with a scythe. He sighed deeply, clenching hands. Tractor wheels had grooved and slewed about, sideways and diagonally down the hump, tearing out and leaving strips of plants of
rye-grass
, stubble, and clover deracinated from that infirm soil he was trying to build up—the rips of a tiger's hind-claws on its prey, all down the slopes among the corn-dollies.

Was Luke trying to get himself sacked?

*

By Wednesday, September the tenth, the 1941 corn harvest of the Bad Lands was gathered into six stacks of corn. One
twelve-yard
stack of Squarehead 11 wheat had been built on the Bustard field, beside the bullock yard in the wood. In line with it, and adjacent, was an eleven-yard barley stack. Just over the hedge a third stack of barley stood. These three corn-stacks were so sited that the straw during threshing would fall from the elevator by the wooden railings, there to be built into stacks acting as
wind-shields
on two sides of the yard. Thus sheltered, the bullocks would be held from October to April on hay, barley straw, and those roots of the Lower Brock Hanger which had just about doubled their size since the horse-hoeing. Even so, they were a half-crop only.

The third side of the yard was already protected by the haystack. On the fourth side, in the wood, was a shed with gutters collecting, below a roof of corrugated iron sheets, rain to feed the five-
hundred-gallon
water-tank. Thus the yard would be warm and snug in winter, while bullocks trod successive layers of straw-bedding into good muck, all handy for carting to the adjacent fields.

The fourth stack, oats, stood down below by the Duck Decoy, ready for Gladstone Gogney's threshing tackle. Its base was two feet above the summer low-level of water flowing sea-ward in the grupp. The fifth and sixth stacks, both of barley, had been built in front of the Corn Barn. These two were to be thatched. The other stacks were already covered by green rot-proof cloths against the promised arrival of the threshing machine which Billy had
once christened, with a bottle of what he called ‘cold old tea', ‘The Antediluvian Flier.'

Two years before, at the end of the 1939 harvest, when the last sheaf had been loaded on the tumbril, Matt had flung his cap into the air. He had not done that since. The war harvests had been too long, there had been too many rain-breaks, the labourer's rations were not sufficient for hard graft. Thoughts of death;
restriction
s upon life, liberty, and hope; the prolonged defeats suffered by their country, had subdued them all; yet here and there making a man think, which is what happens when he looks into himself to find the truth.

*

Now Phillip was free to return to ploughing the Higher Brock. The top soil was dry, set hard. To plough twelve inches deep, to cover flag of aftermath, the tractor must be driven in bottom gear. When Luke relieved him one day Phillip asked him, with an assumed apologetic friendliness, on no account to use second gear. At the worst, he said, the engine might knock itself to pieces: at the least, the pistons slap the cylinders oval.

“I'm sorry to be so emphatic about it, Luke, but as I've said before, it now takes up to six months to get an engine repaired. So keep in low gear, for I want a furrow twelve inches deep.”

“I wouldn't do it this way, if 'twas mine. It ain't necessary.”

“Well, my idea is to break the hard crust, or pan, about eight inches down. When Boy Billy relieves you, please do not forget to tell him to plough—
in
—
bottom
—
gear
!”

“You're master.”

Phillip left Luke going slowly in bottom gear up and down the field, as he had asked. Later Boy Billy took over and when Phillip went up there to relieve him he saw a grassy fringe, or flag, to all of the furrow-slices. The difference in appearance was due to shallow ploughing. Phillip asked why. Billy replied that to avoid the engine being overloaded in second gear he had eased the plough out of the ground until it was throwing over a shallow furrow.

“Oh my God, didn't Luke tell you it had to be
deep
ploughed in
bottom
gear?”

“I dunno.”

“Weren't you told, on taking over from Luke, that
all
the field had to be ploughed in
bottom
gear?”

Billy shrugged his shoulders.

“Answer my question!”

“I dunno.”

“Go home!”

At the moment it did not occur to Phillip that Billy had kept silent in order to shield Luke.

*

Two days later Higher Brock was finished. The soil had come up easily behind the deep-digger plough, breaking softly as the furrows turned. A stroke of the harrows, and it crumbled.
Another
stroke across the work, and it settled. A couple of hours to let the ‘cobbles' dry out, then the heavy rib-roll to press down the soil to fill air-spaces—a further ‘rank' harrowing—with long-tined harrows, striking deep, to pull any lumps to the surface—and the seed-bed was ready for the once-grown pedigree Squarehead II seed as soon as it was threshed out.

Phillip drove the tractor and harrow-baulks to the Woodland yard, leaving all the lumps on top—a very rough seed-bed indeed. The mould was underneath! There he saw, standing by the yard rails, a familiar brown-eyed, black-haired figure in sagging coat and worn-out gum-boats.

“Yew'll never be able to work down the lumps, master.”

“I don't want to work down the lumps, Matt.”

“Why not?”

“Wheat is a sturdy plant. It doesn't require so fine a seed-bed as barley. And those clods will protect the wheat-plants against frost-winds.”

Matt looked at Phillip straightly. “It's a good idea,” he said, adding with a childlike smile, “Well, yew do think out good ideas sometimes, I'll say thet!”

“Oh, it isn't my idea. I've read it over and over again in the farming journals. Also it's been the custom among arable farmers for some years now. Indeed, an agricultural writer named Virgil wrote about it.”

“Theory,” said Matt, slowly. There was a suggestion of reproach, of distrust, of scepticism in his tone. “If yew don't catch the Higher Brock right, guv'nor, the cobbles will set hard and the drill won't enter when yew come to sow in October!”

“Quite right, Matt. I'm going to drill as soon as the seed-wheat is threshed. Next week, that is. And the seed will go home with the loose mould under the cobbles.”

“Drill in September, guv'nor?”

“That's why I ploughed now, when point and mouldboard can enter the ground soft after all the rain.”

“I'm not sure yew ain't right, guv'nor,” he said, musingly. “Get it in early.”

“That's the ‘theory'.”

“Ah,” he shook his head, “master don't trust us, do he? We can't do narthin' right, can we? Master listens to other voices.” He pretended to a sadness that was not all pretence. He looked up at a flight of Spitfires rushing overhead and out to sea. “All that money being wasted,” he said, before looking Phillip straightly in the eyes and saying, “Go easy with Billy Boy, master. I heer'd you a-mobbin' of him th'arther day when he wor' a-tractorin'——”

“Now listen a moment, Matty dear. I'm trying to make this farm into a fine modern farm. Which means that the minds and loyalties of those working on it——”

“Trying, master?
Trying?
What's wrong with the farm? Isn't the earn good? Why, my dear man, it's as good as any in the district! Ain't the meadows good? Ain't my buds a-doin'? Look what yew hev a-done! Why there harn't another man like yew, not in a hunner' thousand! Who else'd'v warked the farm up as yew've a-done it, in so short a time? Look at the roads, look at the buildings! But yew don't rest, master. Yar'll kill yarself. Then who's ta follow yew? Why, in a year or two, 'twill all be back where it wor'! I seen farmers come, an' I seen farmers go, I hev. You must go easier, guv'nor. This land won't run away——”

“Most of the fertility has already, Matt.”

“Look you a-here, master! What use was all them people coming on the farm to yew? Look at 'em, from the start, who was any good? All they wanted was a Convalescent Home. They don't understand the wark, master. They worry yew, and that upsets the men. They feel they can't do a'thing right, master! I've a-sin my boy Luke sit by th' fire, and worry hi'self thin. That's why he give up bein' steward. Yew'll see I'm right, guv'nor,” he said significantly. “Yew've got to be born to the wark, all these wot comes is only out fur themselves, and narthin' else. This
landgel
, Sarah Somp'n, yew got to look after the 'osses since my boy give up being teamsman, what do she knaw about the wark, guv'nor? Yew'll larn, yew'll see I'm right!”

“She keeps the stables clean by sweeping, Matt. I like to see them clean.”

“But this is a
farm
, guv'nor, not a racin' stables!”

Phillip was stilled by the emotion in the stockman's voice and bearing, and by the picture of the ex-steward, and now
ex-teamsman
, worrying by the fire—he who had never left his native
village, and therefore could not know anything other than what he had seen or heard while working for tired, declining farmers during the poverty-stricken decades between the two wars. How long before Luke gave up working for him altogether? The thought was saddening—and alarming. Phillip was fond of him, as he was fond of Matt. Alas, that their minds could not, in Luke's phrase, ‘cog in'! And if Luke went, where could he find a man to replace him?

It seemed that, by transposition of ideas, the stockman ascribed to him thoughts that were in his own mind, for he said after a few moments, “Ah, I know Matt would be going soon enough if master could git anyone better!”

“It's never been in my mind to lose you, Matt. Or your son, Luke.”

“Look yew a-here, master! Do yew know I haven't had a holiday, not one day, in three year now? Sunday, Saturday, Christmas Day, not one day's holiday, nor a day's illness? And why? Because I'm sarvin' yar interests. I'm trying to 'arn yar money! I doan't keep the yards an' the boxes like the stables o' Buckenham Palace, do I? I do do me best, master. Now that young leddy, what's her a-doin' of here?”

“She's a cousin of my wife, come to help, Matt.”

“Sweep, sweep, sweep, in the stables, wearin' out brooms, thet's about all she ken do! What comes in to pay fur all the brooms? What're yew gettin' out o' the farm, guv'nor? Narthin'!”

“How old are you?” Phillip asked him, venturing away from good manners.

“Old enough, master.”