Homeland (13 page)

‘Another time perhaps.’

‘Yes? I’ll drop by, then, shall I? When I’m next passing.’

It might have been his imagination but her expression seemed to soften a little in the moment before she closed the door.

I
T WAS
seven by the time Bennett finished his last call and headed home. As he drove in through the gates, the headlamps briefly illuminated Marjorie
drawing the curtains at an upstairs window. She gave him a bright wave and he parked with a sense of good fortune, thinking of the sherry they would enjoy by the fire and the book on the ancient
lake villages of Somerset which he was looking forward to reading after dinner. They had come to the village from Bristol four months after the outbreak of war when it became clear that, instead of
working towards retirement, Bennett would have to remain in harness for the duration. He had taken over the adjoining practices of two doctors who had volunteered for the army, an option closed to
him by dint of age and invalidity. A gas attack on the Somme had left him with recurrent bronchitis and chronic asthma. The Levels were not perhaps the best place for a man with weak lungs, but
Bennett had never been prepared to make concessions to his debility. He liked the place, he was intrigued by its history, and though the house was like an ice-box in winter and prone to mysterious
attacks of damp in summer, he and Marjorie had fallen for the view across Aller Moor towards the Polden Hills.

‘You haven’t forgotten that we’re going to the Hanleys,’ Marjorie said as they kissed.

He had of course forgotten; he always did. ‘No hope of escape?’

‘None. Their son’s just home from the war.’

‘Ah yes. What’s his name again?’

‘Lyndon. He won the Military Cross.’

They had a sherry and a quick supper of soup and cheese before setting off. Bennett was called out to emergencies often enough to be resigned to the loss of his leisurely dinner, but he
couldn’t help feeling a small pang at having to postpone the joys of his fireside and the long-anticipated book for a gathering from which they would be unable to escape for at least two
hours.

They walked to save petrol, wearing galoshes against the mud. Gazing at the stars, Bennett wondered why a farming couple, albeit a prosperous one, should have given their son such an unlikely
name as Lyndon. He doubted the idea had come from the wife, a quiet inoffensive creature by the name of – he had to prod his memory –
Janet.
More likely, it had come from the
husband, Arthur Hanley, a successful farmer and leader of the local community. Bennett tried not to listen too closely to gossip, yet in such a small place it was impossible to ignore it
altogether, and he had heard more than once that Hanley’s influence stretched beyond the chairmanship of the local drainage board to the county council itself, and that this influence was not
unconnected to mysterious food parcels containing beef, cheese and cider which the county councillors were said to receive on a regular basis. Bennett had always put such rumours down to
mischief-making, not only because a man in Hanley’s position was bound to attract gossip, but because he found it impossible to believe that influence could be bought by such means.

Janet Hanley opened the door. She was a small shapeless woman with wire-rimmed spectacles, short greying hair held back by a grip, and timid eyes. Barely responding to Marjorie’s bright
remarks about the weather, she waited anxiously to take their coats and hang them on a peg. She fretted over the galoshes too, placing them on the floor directly beneath the coats, toes pointed
neatly to the skirting.

They entered a plain room with lumpy Edwardian furniture, ageing wallpaper and thin rugs over a parquet floor. There were nine or ten other guests, the men standing in front of the fire, the
women seated around the bay window. There was no sign of the son.

Arthur Hanley stepped forward. ‘Welcome, Doctor. Mrs Bennett,’ he said formally. ‘Good of you to come. And what will you have to drink?’

Bennett’s gaze had already fixed on the bottle of Teacher’s standing between the sherry and the Madeira. Scotch was still a sufficiently rare commodity for him to ask, ‘If you
can spare it?’

‘Of course.’

Hanley poured a measure that was neither mean nor over-generous, and it occurred to Bennett that he was someone who gauged all his actions, large and small, with care.

Marjorie took a sherry and, exchanging a brief supportive glance with Bennett, moved off towards the other women.

‘Good health, Doctor.’ Hanley raised his glass. He was a man in his mid-fifties with a low belly and a pinched face over hunched shoulders. He wore the tweed suit, checked shirt and
knitted waistcoat of the working farmer, an image reinforced by his distinctive Somerset burr. He owned the largest dairy farm in the immediate area, with two hundred acres on the ridge and another
fifty on West Sedgemoor, yet his appearance, like that of his home, proclaimed a deliberate simplicity and lack of pretension. He was registered as a patient of Bennett’s but had yet to call
on his services. In the normal course of events Bennett saw him once a week at church, where Hanley, as churchwarden, read the first lesson in a rich baritone.

‘I gather your son has come back with an MC,’ Bennett said. ‘You must be very proud.’

Hanley inclined his head modestly.

‘Has he been home long?’

‘Just a week.’

For once Bennett’s memory didn’t let him down. ‘The East, wasn’t it?’

‘Burma.’

‘And he got through in good shape?’

‘Lyndon’s fit as a flea. Always has been,’ Hanley declared robustly, with a glance towards the door. ‘He’ll be here shortly. Been putting his new motorbike through
its paces.’

‘I say! Lucky chap.’

‘Oh, it’s not
brand new
,’ Hanley corrected him, as though such expenditure in a time of austerity would have been the height of indelicacy. ‘I picked it up from an
American serviceman in Taunton.’

‘Still. A fine present.’

‘A small token to mark his homecoming.’

A motorbike was hardly a small token, and Bennett couldn’t help thinking that, for all Hanley’s show of plain living, he liked people to know he had the means to splash out when he
chose to.

‘Does Lyndon have any plans yet? Will he be joining you in the dairy business?’

Hanley’s slow gaze sharpened. ‘It would be a bit of a waste of his education.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Bennett murmured absent-mindedly. ‘Which university was it?’

‘Bristol. A first in history.’

‘Goodness,’ Bennett said admiringly. ‘Well, he can certainly pick and choose with a qualification like that. Is he thinking of a profession?’

But Hanley’s eyes were back on the door. He said distractedly, ‘Come and meet the others.’

Bennett knew two of the men standing by the fire. One was a patient, a retired solicitor, the other a young farmer he’d met somewhere locally. The third, a fortyish man with horn-rimmed
spectacles, was introduced to him as John Creasy. From Hanley’s manner it seemed that Creasy was a person of some importance, though Bennett didn’t grasp in what field. The young farmer
was talking loudly about Somerset’s performance in the first cricket season since the war. It wasn’t until the conversation turned to local matters that Bennett gathered Creasy was a
drainage expert.

‘Not planning to drain us dry, I trust?’ Bennett remarked.

‘He doesn’t do the
planning
,’ Hanley interjected in a firm voice. ‘The Drainage Board does the planning.’

‘Yes, I—’

‘He’s an engineer. A feasibility man.’

‘Of course. I was just wondering what was possible nowadays from a technical point of view, that was all. I’d certainly miss the floods.’

Hanley exchanged a look with Creasy. ‘There you are, John. Got to allow for those that like the water.’

‘From our house it’s like being on a ship at sea,’ Bennett said. ‘You feel you’re on a voyage without the inconvenience of leaving home.’

Hanley said, ‘A rather fanciful view for a scientific man, if I may say so, Doctor. I don’t think there’s a modern farmer who’d give you tuppence for the appearance of
the floods, not when it’s his fields that’s under water late into the spring.’

‘I thought the water had its uses.’

‘What, as a fertiliser? You’ve been listening to the old boys again, Doctor. No, properly drained, with the application of modern chemicals, the land would be twice as productive.
Two crops a year. Sheep grazing all winter.’

‘Ah. Put like that . . .’ murmured Bennett, in no mood for such a dispiriting conversation.

‘But we’re nowhere near that yet. Are we, John? Too much geography against us, too much rainfall. So I wouldn’t fret, Doctor – you’ll be at sea for a long while
yet.’

The young farmer echoed, with a belly laugh, ‘A long while yet.’

Hanley’s gaze swung inexorably to the door once again. ‘Now where’s Lyndon?’ he muttered under his breath, and it seemed to Bennett that his mood of anticipation had
given way to quiet fury. Small spasms pulled at his mouth, making a bow of his lower lip that rose and fell, flexed and straightened. It was a tic Bennett had noticed before, when Hanley stood at
the lectern locating his place for the first lesson.

Looking for something to say, Bennett remarked, ‘Demob seems to be speeding up at last. I hear that Mrs Gant’s son is home. And the Shepton boys.’

‘Mmm? Yes . . . But they’ve got it the wrong way round, if you ask me.’

‘Oh?’

‘The authorities – organising demob on the “First in, first out” principle. Got their priorities topsy-turvy. They should have released the men who were prepared to take
the vital jobs first, the ones prepared to knuckle down and get the country back on its feet. The sort we’re getting now don’t want to get their hands dirty. The Gant boy – he
used to help us out. But now he’s turning his nose up at the chance of dairyman. Says he wants to work for himself. Well, he’s in for a rude awakening, I can tell you. They all
are.’

‘War changes men’s aspirations, I suppose.’

‘I’d say it muddles their thinking. You can dress it up any way you like, but at the end of the day a man’s only worth what the market will pay. And the market’s no
different now to what it was before the war. You can’t suddenly go paying men higher wages if the yield’s not there. These boys – they don’t know a good thing when they see
it. A steady job, a roof over their heads – what more do they want?’

What they wanted, Bennett suspected, was to receive more than the minimum wage and a tied cottage from which they could be evicted at a month’s notice, but he thought it unwise to mention
this.

‘Wouldn’t be so bad if they’d send us more POWs,’ Hanley sighed. ‘Not good for much, the Germans, but at least they keep the rhynes open. The Eyeties were far
better of course, but we don’t get them any more.’

‘Haven’t most of them been repatriated?’

But Hanley’s attention had wandered again. His eyes flicked darkly over Bennett’s shoulder and around the room.

From the window a ripple of laughter rose up. Picking out Marjorie’s distinctive chuckle, Bennett turned and watched her for a moment, mildly surprised even after all these years that the
fine-looking woman with the pretty smile should be his wife.

Turning back to Hanley, he said, ‘If you’re short of men, have you thought of employing some Poles from the new camp?’

Hanley muttered, ‘Not likely.’

‘Why not?’

‘Wouldn’t work.’

‘But many come from farming backgrounds.’

‘That’s as may be.’

‘They’re very quick. Very hard working.’

‘That’s not the point, is it?’

Bennett might have left it there, but something in Hanley’s tone stirred his equable nature towards protest. He asked mildly, ‘But what would be the problem?’

Breaking free of his thoughts, Hanley brought his full attention to bear. ‘Listen, Doctor, I’ve nothing against them personally, nothing at all, but they don’t belong here, and
it’s no good encouraging them to stay. They need to go back to where they came from.’

‘But most of them can’t go back.’

‘Can’t or won’t? The trouble is there’s no incentive for them to leave, is there? Not when they’re getting everything given to them on a plate. Housing, food, you
name it. A hundred and twenty
thousand
of them. And that’s not counting the wives and children who’ll be following them in droves. This is a small country. We don’t have
room for those sorts of numbers. And we don’t have the means to feed them either, not when the country’s on its knees, not when our own people aren’t getting enough to eat –
women and children, men back from the war, going hungry. No – when times are hard, charity starts at home.’

‘But the Poles are keen to take on even the roughest work. They’ll do anything—’

‘And this resettlement camp at Middlezoy,’ Hanley hammered on regardless. ‘I don’t know what the government’s thinking of, dumping five hundred of these folk in a
rural community like ours, miles from anywhere. What’re they going to do all day? How are they going to keep themselves occupied? Well, we already know, don’t we? They’ll end up
roaming the countryside, causing all kinds of trouble.’