Jack Mercybright (The Apple Tree Saga Book 2), page 8
‘It’s for you,’ she said. ‘Philippa threw it out weeks ago, just because two slats are broken. I thought you might mend it.’
‘I could, I daresay. But I don’t want you bringing me things from out of the farmhouse. I’d just as soon not be beholden.’
‘This chair has been out in all weathers. It would only rot away in the end. Just look at the state it’s in already ‒ there’s scarcely a scrap of varnish left on it.’
‘All right,’ he said, and took it from her. ‘But no more presents after this, remember.’
He repaired the chair a day or two later and rubbed it down with glass-paper. He stained it dark with permanganate of potash and polished it with best brown boot-polish warmed at the fire. It was now a fine old handsome chair, and Nenna made him a flat cushion, with tapes for tying it to the slats at the back.
‘There!’ she said, setting the chair at a little angle beside the fire-place. ‘Now you’ll have somewhere comfortable to sit when you want to smoke your pipe in the evenings.’
‘Yes. The place is getting to look quite homely.’
‘With just one chair?’ she said, laughing, and glanced about at the brick floor, which, although scrubbed and reddled, was still quite bare. ‘You need a few mats about the place to make it warmer. You need a table and cupboards and then some pegs to hang your coats on ‒’
‘Yes, well, all in good time, I dare say. Rome warnt built in a day, you know. And don’t go bringing me things from the house or your sister will say I’m preying on you to my own advantage.’
‘You don’t like Philippa, do you?’
‘Not much,’ he said, ‘though I sometimes feel sorry for her, in a way.’
‘She wouldn’t care for that, your feeling sorry for her. That would be a blow to her pride indeed.’
‘I shan’t tell her. Nor will you. So she ent likely ever to know it.’
Every evening now, while the daylight lasted, he worked on the outside walls of the house, adding coat upon coat of lime wash to the clay-filled panels. Then, after dark, he worked indoors by firelight and lamplight: plastering the inner sides of the panels; renewing pegs in the beams where needed; laying new floorboards in the upper rooms. And sometimes, as a change, he made furniture for the kitchen.
‘I suppose you were once a joiner, too, as well as a carpenter?’ Nenna said, holding the lamp for him one evening.
‘No, I’m no joiner, and anyone looking at this here table would pretty soon know it, too,’ he said.
‘Why, what’s wrong with it, I’d like to know?’
‘Well, the timber’s good, so it looks a lot better than the work that’s in it, and a bit of polish will do the rest. Anyway, it’s good enough for the likes of me to eat his dinner off of, ent it?’
While he was working, a rat ran across the kitchen floor and passed right over Nenna’s foot. She gave a loud scream and almost dropped the lamp she was holding. It made Jack jump, and his chisel slipped, cutting the palm of his left hand. The rat ran out through the open doorway; Jack gave chase and cornered it as it tried to run up the side of the cottage; he killed it with his hammer and threw it over into the pig-run.
By the time he returned, the cut in his hand was bleeding badly, and Nenna turned away from it with a shudder. The sight of blood always made her feel faint. But still she insisted on washing it for him and tying it up with a handkerchief.
‘You’re always in the wars,’ she said to him. ‘You’re always doing yourself some kind of damage.’
‘I must be clumsy, then, I suppose.’
‘I’m sorry I screamed, but I hate rats.’
‘There were dozens here when I first came. They used to run over me while I slept. But they’ve mostly disappeared since I started cleaning the old place up and generally creating a big disturbance. That one tonight was the first I’ve seen in more’n a twelvemonth.’
He cleaned the rat’s blood from the head of his hammer, and took the chisel in his bandaged hand. He looked across at Nenna, who was casting around with the lamp before her, still nervously scanning the floor.
‘I never used to trouble about the rats before,’ he said, ‘but they’re going to notice a big difference now I’m a chap with a chair and a table.’
Chapter Six
Spring that year was soft, warm, and damp. The new leys grew apace, and the meadows, under improved management, were lush with broadbladed grass and clover. Summer came in full of promise and mowing started earlier than usual, but the year turned out to be one of exceptional thunderstorms, so that in the end haymaking durdled on and on until long after the cuckoo had flown.
‘Is it wise to cut?’ Miss Philippa would ask, waylaying Jack as he entered a meadow. ‘There’s another storm threatening, I’m almost sure.’
‘I think cut, storm or no storm. Better to have it in the swath, getting wet, than beaten down so’s we can’t cut it.’
‘I suppose so,’ she would say, frowning. ‘Yes. Yes. I suppose so.’
She was on the go all through haymaking, out at all hours, working in a fever; fretting at every slightest delay; scolding Nenna if she came late into the hay-field.
‘The way she goes on,’ Joe Stretton muttered to Jack, ‘you’d think she ate hay for every meal.’
‘Maybe she does,’ said Peter Luppitt, overhearing. ‘A nag always likes a fat hay-bag.’
The three of them were in Longsides Meadow, at work with their scythes, cutting a pathway from the gateway round, so that Jack could get in with the reaping machine. In the parallel meadow, known as Horner’s, the hay was already cut and made and the rest of the men, with their wives and children, were hurrying to get it safely cocked before the next storm broke and descended. Miss Philippa was with them and her voice could be heard even at that distance, berating little Archie Gauntlet because he had broken a tooth in his hay-rake.
In the middle of the afternoon, the reaping machine seized up, for the toughest grasses had wound themselves round the end of the axle that drove the blades. Jack got down, took a few tools out of the tool-box, and went to put the matter right. He was bending over the old machine when lightning flashed in the dark southern sky, followed at once by a crack of thunder, and big raindrops came slopping down. Stretton and Luppitt went at once to push their scythes in under the hedgerow. Then they ran for shelter in the old milking-shed at the top end of Horner’s.
‘Come on, Jack!’ Stretton called in his great bull-like voice. ‘It’s going to be a real drencher!’
Jack dropped his spanners and hammer on the ground and followed Stretton to the shed, where all the haymakers were already gathered, packed close together at one end to avoid a leak in the roof at the other.
‘We’ve finished our lot,’ Archie Gauntlet said to Jack, and pointed out at the rows of haycocks ranged along Horner’s Meadow. ‘Just about in the nick of time, warnt it?’
‘My bonnet’s out there,’ said his sister, Phoebe, with great sadness. ‘It fell off when I started running.’
And she hid her face in her mother’s apron as lightning again lit the sky and thunder splintered overhead. As the thunder quietened, the white rain fell faster, blanching across the green landscape and filling the air with a loud angry swish that seemed to foretell the end of the world.
It was all over in a few minutes. Then the sun came out again. Phoebe was running to retrieve her wet bonnet and the rest of the haymakers were trooping through the open gateway into Longsides Meadow. And the smell of drenched hay, steaming hotly, was now so sweet that it made a man giddy, Peter Luppitt said.
Jack went back to the reaping machine. He saw that all was not as it should be. Three of the blades were badly buckled; twisted into crazy curves until they were almost touching each other. The tools he had left in a heap were now scattered, the two spanners quite three yards apart, the hammer under the machine itself. He smelt burning and then became aware that the ground was smoking all around him, where the lightning had gone through the wet grass.
‘Christ!’ said Joe Stretton, just behind him. ‘It’s a lucky thing you came when I called you or you’d be a goner by now, sure as fate!’
‘Ah,’ Jack said, and stooped to pick up the long-handled hammer, the head of which was still warm. ‘Would you believe it! It’s a lucky thing, like you say.’
He went to the mare to comfort her, for her ears were back and her eyes rolling, and she was covered in a froth of sweat. She would not be fit for more work that day. She was scouring badly and her legs would only just support her.
The haymakers were gathering round the reaper, some of them bravely touching the blades, others keeping their hands in their pockets, safely. There was a buzz of excitement among them. They looked at Jack as though he had suddenly sprouted wings.
‘You should’ve covered the machine over,’ said Joe Stretton. ‘That’s asking for trouble, that is, with them blades there shining so silver bright.’
‘I reckon I should’ve,’ Jack agreed, ‘but I never brought no canvas with me.’
He undid the traces and let the swingletree fall to the ground. He went again to Dinkymay’s head. He was still trying to comfort her, speaking to her in a quiet voice, when Miss Philippa came along with Nenna and pushed a way through the little crowd. Nenna looked at the twisted blades of the reaper and touched one gingerly with the tips of her fingers. She looked at Jack with incredulous eyes.
‘You might have been killed,’ she said, shocked.
‘He would’ve been, too,’ Stretton said, ‘if it hadn’t been for me calling him to come away when I did.’
‘Oh, really, this is too bad!’ Miss Philippa said, seeing the damage done to the reaper. ‘Everything seems to be against us this summer. We shall never be done with haymaking at this rate. How long will it take to repair, do you think?’
‘I dunno,’ Jack said. ‘If we get it down to the forge right away, Tom Andrews might have it done by morning. It all depends how busy he is.’
‘See to it, then, will you?’ she said. ‘Get Andrews to hurry. Tell him we’re desperate.’
‘That’s the penalty,’ Stretton said, ‘of only having one old reaper!’
Miss Philippa pretended not to hear him.
‘Meanwhile, Mercybright, set the men to mow here by hand.’
‘Right,’ Jack said, but he made no immediate move to obey, and Miss Philippa, in the act of walking away, stopped and looked back.
‘Well, man, where’s the point in delaying the matter? Why are you making a fuss of that mare?’
‘I’m getting her home in a minute or two. She’s in a pretty bad state of nerves. But it’s no good trying to chivvy her up.’
‘Don’t talk such nonsense! We’ve wasted enough time here already. You can use that mare for getting the reaper down to the village.’
‘Not Dinkymay. She needs rest and quiet. She needs a bit of coddling up. She came a lot nearer to death than I did.’
Miss Philippa’s lips were pressed tight together, and her eyes glittered, but, knowing he would not give way before her, she thought it best to argue no further. Instead, she gave vent to her temper by sneering at him.
‘You’re making a great deal of capital out of this, I must say! You and all your fellows here! Perhaps you would like me to declare a half holiday all round? But surely there’s nothing so very extraordinary about a bolt of lightning, is there?’
She walked away, and Joe Stretton, in huge delight, treated Jack to a powerful shove.
‘So that’s put you in your proper place for once and no error! It’s no good you thinking you’re something special just ’cos you had such a near miss. Oh dear me no! No lections of that! It’s as common as pass-the-jug-round-and-find-it-empty. Now if you’d been struck, that’d be different. The parson would’ve preached a special sermon over your poor dead remains and the details would all’ve been put on your tombstone.’
‘I’d sooner be a live Nobody than a dead Somebody,’ Jack said, and led the quivering Dinkymay slowly homewards.
They were playing catch with the weather right on to the end of July, but the hay was all got in at last and was all well made. Only one stack, up in the meadow at Far Fetch, had to be opened and dried out because of heating.
‘Well, we shan’t have to buy hay from Spouts next winter, shall we?’ Peter Luppitt said to his brother, making sure Miss Philippa heard him. ‘Nor shall we have our cattle turning up their noses at the home-grown stuff as they have done in years gone by, poor souls.’
The storms continued into August, and some of the corn in the upper fields was laid low under the onslaught. Miss Philippa fretted worse than ever. She was always calling Jack’s attention to some new example of the weather’s depredations. She behaved almost as if he were to blame.
‘Just look at this!’ she said, taking him into a field of twenty-seven acres known as Long Pitch, under Tootle Barrow. ‘Just look what has happened here overnight!’ For the hot boisterous wind, blowing in at the south east corner, had carved a long corridor through the oats, all the way down beside the hedgerow.
‘Yes, I noticed it this morning, first thing. It looks for all the world as if someone had left the gate open up there, don’t it, and let the wind in?’
‘It’s even worse in the Round Wood Field. The barley is lodged in great patches all over. And the Home Field too.’
‘Ah,’ Jack said. ‘It’s these here hot squalls.’
‘You don’t seem very worried about it.’
‘What can I do? Stand it all up again, is that what you want?’ He plucked a few grains from a ripening oatspray and rubbed the husks off in his palm. ‘Worrying won’t make matters better. It’ll only turn your hair grey, that’s all.’
‘It’s easy enough for you to say that! You get your wages whatever the weather does to the crops! It’s no odds to you one way or the other!’
‘You’ll still get a good enough harvest,’ he said, nibbling the oatseed. ‘Better than you’ve had these many years past.’
The thunderstorms ended eventually, and when harvest began in the middle of August, they were visited only by short light showers falling out of a pale sky. The workers were glad of these little showers. They would turn up their faces to receive the cool drops.
As Jack had predicted, the harvest that year, although not good, was better than the farm had yielded for a long, long time. Miss Philippa was pleased. She was in great spirits. For once she welcomed all the itinerants who came to Brown Elms in quest of work, though she afterwards worried about the gypsies camping in the birchwoods close behind the farmhouse.
‘So long as they’re close, you’re all right,’ Jack told her. ‘Gypsies never steal near home. It’s your neighbour John Tuller at Maryhope that’ll likely lose his eggs and poultry.’
‘Well, they’ll grow no fatter on that!’ she said, and he glanced at her in some surprise. He had never known her make a joke before. A smile wrought wonders in her rather severe and hard-boned features.
Towards the end of August, the weather turned exceptionally hot, and the harvesters, pledged as they were for every ounce of their strength and endurance, became more silent day by day. The sun’s passion was already a burden upon them. Now its demands were cruel indeed.
A man with sweat in his eyes is blind to everything but the need to keep going. He sees only the corn not yet cut, and his blade going through it. He is deaf to everything but the sound of his own blood pounding in his head. He waits for the short night’s sleep that stills it. Such a man has nothing to say. His tongue is swollen in his mouth. His lips are burning. He has mortgaged every bit of strength and survives on a budget. Speech is one of the first things to go and no one resents it. They are all as one in this at least.
But the day comes when the silence is broken. A man with a scythe makes one last wide embracing sweep, and the last of the corn goes down before him. Another takes it in his hands; a third steps forward to tie it round; and up it goes for all to see: the last sheaf.
‘That’s the one! The best of the lot! The one we’ve been looking for all through harvest!’
The silence is broken. The dumb men find their tongues. The sheaf is held aloft and goes round the field to the sound of cheering and rough laughter. And because the custom has come down from the very earliest ages, the words the harvesters use are old.
‘The neck! The neck! Make way for the neck! Here come we, fine chaps one and all! ‒ Make way for us! We bring the neck!’
Ten days later, with the weather still scorching hot, the last load was ready for carting from the Hole Hill Field at Far Fetch. It stood on the brow, with a couple of ropes tied over it for safety, and with Minta, the big roan mare, between the shafts.
The younger lads were gathered in a little circle, making up a special sheaf of barley and oats and wheat together, with scarlet poppies entwined in the bond. When they were done they went to Joe Stretton, the Lord of the Harvest, and put the sheaf into his hands. There was much nodding and winking among them; much whispered argument and banter; and they kept glancing towards Nenna, who stood waving a branch of elder to keep the flies out of Minta’s eyes.
‘Right you are!’ Stretton said. ‘We’ll go and ask her.’
With the others behind him, he walked up to Nenna and touched his cap.
‘The lads would like you to ride on the load, miss. Bringing in the luck, as you might say. And they’ve made up a special harvest sheaf for you to carry in your arms.’
‘Up there?’ Nenna said, looking at the load rising above her. ‘It’s very high.’
‘You’ll be all right, miss. It’s well roped down, don’t you worry, and we shall see to it that you get a smooth ride.’
‘Very well,’ Nenna said. ‘I wouldn’t want to spoil the luck.’
She stuck the elder branch into the hames of Minta’s collar, took the sheaf presented to her by Joe Stretton, and climbed the ladder onto the load. She settled herself comfortably, spreading her blue skirts out around her, and slipped one hand in under the cross-rope.
