Jack Mercybright (The Apple Tree Saga Book 2), page 12
‘Ah, that’ll make everything dandy, I daresay.’
‘Are you laughing at me?’ Nenna demanded.
‘Good gracious,’ he said, ‘as though I would!’
‘I’m not laughing, let me tell you.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Oh, you do make me cross sometimes, you do, really!’
‘Hush a minute and listen,’ he said. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘No. What?’
‘My belly rumbling. It’s wondering why I’m late with its supper.’
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, and rushed to open the door of the oven. ‘There, would you believe it? Just look at my patty!’ And she showed him a pie somewhat charred at the edges.
‘I like ’em like that, nice and crispy. What’s it got inside? Meat and taters? Ah, I knowed it was, the instant I smelt it.’
‘You!’ she said. ‘A lot you care what it’s got inside it, you old bread-and-cheese, you! You’re just wanting to change the subject.’
‘What subject was that?’ he asked vaguely.
‘You know well enough what subject it was.’
Nenna brought a dish of carrots and cabbage to the table, and a jug of gravy. She sat down and began cutting into the pie.
‘I’m thinking about the future,’ she said. ‘The farm could belong to our children one day. You surely don’t blame me for keeping their interests in mind, do you?’
‘No, I don’t blame you. At least, not exactly. But you don’t expect your sister to stay single all her life just so’s our children should get the farm?’
‘No, of course not,’ Nenna said, shocked. ‘But, after all, she is well past thirty. She’s not very likely to get a great many chances now.’
‘She’s got John Tuller. Or so it seems.’
‘He’d bring her nothing but humiliation. And how would you feel if the farm became Tuller’s when it might very well have come to your son?’
‘This is too much for me,’ he said. ‘It’s looking too far into the future.’
That Nenna should be so calculating was a thing that amazed him. This jealousy on behalf of her young, for the rights and possessions accruing to them, must be something that came with motherhood, just as extra strength came to the heavily burdened body, and milk to the breasts. He looked at her with new eyes, and Nenna looked back without shame. She was now very big and sat with dignity, arranging the folds of her smock in front with a care that made him smile anew.
‘How come you’re so sure it’s a son you’re carrying? Did your gypsy friends up in the birchwood tell you?’
‘Yes!’ she said defiantly. ‘You may scoff if you like but gypsies often know these things and Mrs Rainbow read my face.’
She put a small piece of pie into her mouth and chewed carefully. Everything she did now was done with great care, on account of the baby.
‘Besides which, I want it to be a son,’ she said.
‘Ah, that just about settles it, then, and no question!’
Chapter Eight
But the child born to them that autumn was a daughter, and was named Linn, after Nenna’s mother. Nenna wept at first with disappointment. She would not have the cot placed anywhere near her. It had to stand against the far wall. But then, seeing Jack’s delight in the baby, she recovered and asked for it to be placed in her arms.
‘You never said you wanted a daughter.’
‘I didn’t know myself till I got her,’ he said. ‘I left that part to the Almighty.’
‘Do you think she’ll forgive me for being disappointed?’
‘It depends how you treat her from now on.’
‘I shall give her lots of brothers and sisters,’ Nenna said. ‘She shall never be a lonely little girl as I was.’
On a working day late in October she brought the baby, wrapped in a woollen shawl in her arms, up to the farm for the men to see and give their blessing.
‘She’ll do well,’ said Peter Luppitt, ‘born with a waxing moon as she was.’
‘Peter’s right there,’ said his brother Paul. ‘I always plants my cabbages when the moon is waxing and you know what mighty things they always grow to.’
‘Married people should always get their children born with a waxing moon,’ said Peter. ‘It’s only common sense.’
‘That ent always easy,’ said William Gauntlet, with a slow and solemn shake of his head.
‘She ent going to open her eyes at us, is she? I reckon she knows we ent much to look at.’
‘I don’t wonder she’s sleeping,’ Jack said. ‘She was up half the night screaming her lungs out.’
‘Got a tooth coming through, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘More likely wind,’ said Oliver Lacey.
‘You want to go to old Grannie Balsam up at Goodlands. She makes the best gripe-water in the district.’
‘Have you took her up on Tootle Knap?’ asked Gauntlet. ‘You should always take a new born babby up on top of Tootle Knap. It’s the highest point in the parish, you see, and gives the child a good start in life, like being baptised or having a mole on her left elbow.’ Jack only smiled, but Nenna wanted to go at once, so he went with her to the top of the mound known as Tootle Knap and there among the elm trees, with the yellow leaves flit-flittering down, he took the baby between his hands and held her up as high as he could.
‘There you are, Linn Mercybright! What do you think of the air up here, then? Suit you nicely, eh, does it?’ And on the way down again he said to Nenna, ‘At least she can’t say we didn’t do all the right things for her!’
‘Don’t you believe in luck?’ Nenna asked.
‘I ought to,’ he said. ‘The way things are going for me just lately, I never see a magpie without I see two!’
He went back to work drilling wheat in the Sliplands, with Harvey Stretton up behind in charge of the seed-box, and a little while later John Tuller came across on his way to the farmhouse.
‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you, bailiff, about those gypsies you’ve got camping here. I don’t approve of it one iota. You shouldn’t allow them to hang about for weeks on end.’
‘They come every year to help with the harvest. They’ll be moving on soon to their winter camp in the quarry at Ludden.’
‘That’s not soon enough to suit me! I’m losing chickens every day.’
‘Then you’d better see Miss Philippa, I reckon.’
‘I shall, never fear. I’m on my way.’
Tuller strode on, smart in breeches and Norfolk jacket, keeping carefully to the headlands. Jack flipped at the horses and they moved off again up the slope, while Harvey Stretton, perched up behind, gave a squawk of laughter.
‘Them chickens he’s lost! ‒ They most likely fell down a crack in the ground, poor things!’
That afternoon, when Jack led the horses into the yard, Tuller was standing there, deep in conversation with Miss Philippa, and had a basket of eggs in his hand. He was well known for being a cadger.
‘I’ve settled the matter of the gypsies, bailiff. Miss Philippa is sending them packing in the morning.’
Jack was surprised. He glanced at Miss Philippa’s blank face. Tuller, it seemed, had influence with her.
But a good many mornings came and went and the gypsies continued to camp in the birchwoods, coming and going just as they pleased.
‘I thought you was sending them packing,’ Jack said, and Miss Philippa gave a little shrug. ‘Why should I?’ she said. ‘They do me no harm and they’ll be moving on anyway in November.’
So she liked to keep Tuller on a string, plainly, and Jack wondered why. It was quite impossible to guess her thoughts or feelings.
As autumn wore on into winter, Tuller was seen more and more at Brown Elms, striding about over the fields and poking his head into the buildings. Jack took care to keep out of his way, sure that meetings would lead to trouble, but the other men fared badly. They complained that Tuller spied on them and carried his tales to Miss Philippa. He had waylaid the Luppitts after work one evening, demanding that they open the sacks they were carrying, and had then confiscated the two brace of pheasants and the hare and rabbit he found inside. So Joe Stretton, every night after that, carried home a sack full of stones, intending, if challenged, to drop it hard on Tuller’s toes.
‘But Farmer Tuller keeps clear of me! And well he might, too, or I should try straightening his long twisty nose-piece!’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Peter Luppitt, ‘but what if he ups and marries our Missus?’
‘If that ever happens I shall emigrate,’ Stretton said. ‘I shouldn’t stay on under Farmer Tuller.’
‘Emigrate?’ said young Harvey.
‘Ah, that’s right, over the water!’
‘What water’s that, Dad? The Atlantic Ocean?’
‘Ennen water!’ Stretton said. ‘There’s some pretty good farms over the other side from Niddup.’
John Tuller was warmly disliked and held in great contempt, too, as the title ‘Farmer’ showed very plainly. For whereas James Trigg of Goodlands and George Ellenton of Spouts Hall, farming their land in the best tradition, were each known as ‘Mister’, the master of Maryhope, frittering his substance away on drink, was everywhere known as ‘Farmer Tuller’.
‘Just imagine,’ said William Gauntlet, ‘selling land to pay for bubbles!’
Jack, however, could not always keep clear of Tuller, and one day late in November, when he had five teams out ploughing the Placketts, Tuller came up and asked for the loan of two horses.
‘I’ve seen Miss Philippa about it and she says I can have them.’
‘Has she indeed? It’s the first I’ve heard.’
‘I want the loan of a man, too. Perhaps you’d be good enough to oblige me. I want some coal fetched from the station.’
‘It’ll have to wait,’ Jack said. ‘I ent wasting good weather like this. Carting coal is a wet-weather job.’
Tuller was angry, but made an effort and kept his temper.
‘When you’ve finished, then. I don’t much mind so long as it’s today.’
‘It won’t be today, no lections of that. When these horses finish this afternoon they’ll have done their stint for today, Mr Tuller, and they’ll be entitled to shut up shop. But I’ll think about it as soon as maybe.’
‘Damn you to hell!’ Tuller said, and this time his temper went for nothing. ‘Come back at once and ask your Mistress! She’ll soon tell you what your orders are!’
‘It’s no odds to me one way or the other. I’m bailiff here, not Miss Philippa, and I’m the one that says what the horses do or don’t do.’
‘We’ll see!’ Tuller said. ‘Oh, yes! We shall see about that, I promise you, man!’
He hurried off across the rough ploughland, and Jack continued up the slope, while, further on along the Placketts, the other men were all agog. A little while later, Tuller returned with Miss Philippa, and they stood together on the lower headland, waiting for Jack to plough down towards them.
‘I hear you’ve refused Mr Tuller the horses.’
‘I didn’t refuse. I only postponed it.’
‘Is it really necessary for all the horses to be out ploughing at the same time?’
‘This weather’s a bonus. It won’t last much longer. If we go all out for the next few days we shall get the Placketts and the Brant sown with dredge-corn. That’s a lot more important to my way of thinking than lugging coal for your neighbours’ fires.’
Tuller’s face was now ugly. He turned to Miss Philippa and thrust out his chin.
‘When I first asked you this small favour, your answer was yes, as I recall.’
‘Only if the horses were not needed here, Mr. Tuller. I said that plainly.’
‘Are you lending or are you not? I don’t much care for haggling about it!’
‘When Mr Mercybright says they can go, you can have them by all means, Mr Tuller.’
‘So! You allow yourself to be ruled by your bailiff?’
‘I am ruled by no one,’ she said stiffly. ‘Not even by friends such as you, Mr Tuller.’
‘No?’ he said, sneering. ‘Well, I wouldn’t let any labourer of mine speak to me as this lumping clod does to you, madam!’
‘You’re forgetting, I think, that Mr Mercybright happens to be my brother-in-law as well as my bailiff. He is therefore something more than a mere labourer.’
‘Not to me, he isn’t! And I’m glad I’ve come to my senses in time!’
Angry at being brought down before his inferiors, Tuller was determined to have his revenge, and made a great show of looking her over from head to foot.
‘By God!’ he said, in a voice that carried across half the field. ‘I had plans for making you my wife, madam, but as I’ve no stomach for welcoming ploughman and pigman at my table, I’m thankful this day has gone as it has done!’
He then walked away along the headland, taking the short way home to Maryhope, and Miss Philippa turned her wrath on Jack.
‘I hope you will always remember,’ she said, ‘that for your sake I fell out with a neighbour and gave him cause to make me look foolish.’
‘My sake?’ Jack said, but she also was walking away.
The men were well pleased with the outcome of the clash that morning. Oliver Lacey had heard most of what had been said and had passed it on to all the others. For once Miss Philippa found favour among them.
‘She told him, didn’t she, eh, Jack? She put Farmer Tuller in his place all right and sent him off with a flea in his ear-hole. Oh, yes! She took him down a peg right nice and tidy.’
‘It’d been a lot better,’ said Joe Stretton, ‘if she’d never rizzed him up in the first place.’
That was Jack’s opinion, too. Tuller, he felt, was probably a bad man to quarrel with. There was sure to be trouble. And sure enough, about three weeks later, the dog Roy was found dead in the sunken track dividing Maryhope land from Brown Elms.
‘He was after my pheasants,’ Tuller said, ‘so my keeper shot him.’
There was no evidence either way. Tuller’s story was well prepared and his keeper confirmed it. All Jack could do was to be on his guard against further incidents and warn the men to be equally watchful, especially the shepherd, who had three dogs.
‘If they kill my Snap or my Pip or my Patsy,’ William Gauntlet said grimly, ‘I shall kill them and no bones about it.’
And the old man, a fearsome figure when he chose to stand upright and make the most of his six-feet-six-inches, went up to Maryhope straight away to deliver his threat in person.
‘You harm my dogs,’ he said to Tuller and the keeper, ‘and I’ll hang both your gutses with the rest of the vermin on your own gallers!’
There were no more dogs killed on the farm, but Tuller was never at a loss how to make trouble, and scarcely a month went by thereafter without some fresh example of his spite: field-gates broken and the hinges levered out of the gate-posts; ballcocks weighed down in the cattle-troughs so that the water overflowed; an old scrub bull allowed in to run with the Brown Elms heifers.
‘There’s nothing worse than a bad neighbour,’ Peter Luppitt said to Jack, ‘unless, of course, it’s two bad neighbours.’
One Sunday morning, after church, as Jack and Nenna stood talking to Philippa in the churchyard, Tuller jostled Jack in passing, turned to glare at them all in contempt, then pushed past to speak to Mrs Carrington Wilby of Halls, presenting his back to the Brown Elms party.
The incident was noticed by almost all those gathered in the churchyard. Philippa and Nenna were both upset. But a moment afterwards Mr Tapyard of Ennen Stoke, an important landowner and a magistrate, came up to them and raised his hat.
‘How are things at Brown Elms? Fat and flourishing, from all I hear, and improving all the time under Mr Mercybright’s supervision. It’s a pity there aren’t a few more farmers like you, Miss Guff, with cattle and sheep and pigs on their land instead of a handful of half-starved pheasants.’ And without much pretence of lowering his voice he then added, ‘If you have any trouble with that fellow Tuller, don’t be afraid to take him to law.’
Miss Philippa was comforted by Tapyard’s show of sympathy and she found the other farmers round about equally friendly. There was not much regard for John Tuller. He was too well known as a spendthrift and a scrounger.
Still, Miss Philippa was a solitary creature, and Jack felt sorry for her, going home to eat her Sunday dinner in the cheerless farmhouse, with only the stone deaf cook for company.
‘It’s her own fault,’ Nenna said. ‘She could easily make friends if she wanted to but she just doesn’t try.’
‘All the same, I feel a bit bad about it, having took you away,’ he said. ‘I reckon we ought to do something about her.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Such as having her here to eat dinner with us on a Sunday, so that you and her can enjoy a bit of a chat together.’
‘Yes,’ Nenna said. ‘That’s a good idea. And perhaps she will then believe that I really do know how to cook.’
The visits were not a success, however, for Miss Philippa was always finding fault with the way Nenna brought up the baby.
‘What a terrible mess that child is making, sucking that piece of cheese,’ she said. ‘Was it you who gave it to her or was it Jack? Ought she to have it, a child her age?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Nenna said. ‘It’s quite plain she likes it.’
‘And does she always have what she likes?’
‘So long as it’s wholesome, certainly.’
‘She’s going to be very spoilt, then, I can see.’
‘She’s going to be happy,’ Nenna said.
Miss Philippa sniffed, watching the child crawling across the floor towards her. She sat sideways in her chair, her skirts drawn in about her legs, determined to elude the sticky, clutching fingers. Jack leant forward and lifted Linn onto his lap.
‘She’s got four teeth, had you noticed?’ he said. ‘And another two on the way.’
‘That’s nothing extraordinary in a child of seven months, is it?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I never had a baby before.’
And, catching Nenna’s eye, he exchanged a little smile with her. It was difficult to share what they had with Philippa ‒ the more they tried, the more they seemed to shut her out.
