South Riding (26 page)

He followed the shepherd to the little room opening off the fold yard which was Naylor’s office, bedroom, surgery and store-house during lambing time. A black lamb slept in a box of rags by the damped-down fire. A collie dog cringed forward whining softly to welcome his master. Naylor poked the congealed cinders, and the flames leapt, revealing a clumsy bed piled with coats and sacking on an old straw-stuffed mattress, a Windsor chair, polished by use, and ropes, sticks, bottles of disinfectant, harness and netting bundles against the wall.

From a cupboard beside the chimney Naylor produced a bottle of whisky, a box of cheap cigars, and two pint mugs.

The whisky and cigars were Carne’s annual gift. His father and grandfather had supplied them during lambing time before him. The shepherd measured two drinks with careful impartiality.

“The little Jersey cow’s in calf again, I see,” he remarked conversationally.

“Yes,” said Carne.

The spring season of mating and birth emphasised his personal tragedy. His spirit was bruised by reiterated disappointment and anxiety. Muriel would never recover again.

If only he were sure of Midge.

If only the slump were over and farming would look up again.

If only he knew that on the council he would defeat Snaith and carry his point about the road.

He was certain of nothing except the recurrent cycle of the seasons.

“You’ll miss Castle when she s calving.”

“Aye. He has a grand way with beasts.”

“If I’m through with this, I’ll give you a hand.”

Neither of them mentioned their knowledge that the beast-man drank and was unreliable, but Carne was aware of Naylor’s unspoken warning and support.

“Thank you,” he said.

The shepherd raised his mug ceremoniously.

“Well, here’s to us.”

At least thought carne, one can be certain of some things. Birth comes at its appointed time. These men are honest. Summer and winter, seed time and harvest, ploughing and lambing—these at least do not change.

With grave ritual they drank.

O
NE RESULT
of Carne’s Cold Harbour meeting was that ten days later Mr. Barnabas Holly found himself, a temporary employee of the council, seated on the lee side of a bean-sack near the Brimsleys’ buildings, sharing lunch with his fellow “civil servant” Topper Beachall. Topper contributed two bottles of beer. Mr. Holly a couple of bacon cakes, some stale bread and a hunk of cheese.

“If Widow Brimsley was a lady,” observed Topper Beachall weightily, “she’d ask us in and give us a good hot dinner.”

“What’s she having?”

“Steak and kidney pie.”

“How do you know?”

“Smell.”

Topper opened his clasp-knife and hacked off a second slice of bread.

“Hum. Bill Heyer’s a lucky fellow.”

“Aye.” Topper munched his cheese.

“Unlucky ’uns weds, and lucky ’uns lives next widows. Here’s to widows, Topper!” said Mr. Holly. He raised his bottle. Any excuse served Mr. Holly for celebration—the maiden of bashful fifteen and the widow of fifty were equally welcome. But widows reminded him of widowers and widowers of an event foretold for April.

He wondered how much doctors really knew. Annie had always been all right before. Now if she’d been a nagger like Chrissie Beachall, there’d have been some consolation in the prospect of danger for her; but Mr. Holly was fond of his wife and anxious about the future of his children.

“How many kids have you had, Topper?” he asked suddenly.

“Four goals, two tries and a miss. This cheese tastes of paraffin.”

“Must ha’ been near the lamp.”

“Your missus cutting you short of rations?”

“She’s not too well. Fact is, she’s expecting again, and it doesn’t suit her.”

“Never does. But they get over it.”

“Aye. My eldest girl’s at High School.”

“Go on.”

“Frames to be a real scholard. Takes after her dad.”

“Go on.”

“Aye. A real scholard. Going to college one day. Latin and Greek and all that.”

“Go on.”

Mr. Holly took another pull at the beer bottle.

He was beginning to feel himself again.

“End up as a teacher, I shouldn’t wonder. You ought to hear her saying poetry. Makes it too. Can’t sing, though. Not like her father. Always was one for singing and reciting my self. Got a prize once, at anniversary concert.”

“Go on.”

Mr. Holly went on.

“It was the Schooner Hesperus

That sailed the wintry sea.

The skipper had taken his little daughter

To bear him companee.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax

Her hair like the dawn of day . . .”

Aye. Once I get started, you can’t fairly stop me. Poetry’s in our family. Heredity. Funny thing that. Always popping out. You can’t beat it. Now, look at our Bert. Temper! Like his Grandad Hazel to the image. When I was courting Annie we used to meet in chapel and walk home together and her ma would put a lamp in t’window, and if blind was up, I’d come right in for a cuddle in t’parlour. But if blind was down it meant old man was in and I’d have to make do with a bit of squeeze behind the tool shed. Bert’s just like him. Bit through a pudding basin when he was a nipper,” boasted the proud father. But he was really thinking about Lydia—thinking of her with pride and understanding and compunction. For if anything happened to Annie, then Lyd would have to leave school and come home to look after things. Annie had said so, and there seemed no way out of it. They had talked things over one night when Lennie kept them awake—teething. Aye. Bachelors had the best of it. It was no joke to be a father. As soon as kids stopped teething they were wearing out shoe leather, with appetites like elephants. Of course when a girl was clever like Lydia, it was worth while. Just like her old dad, she was, if only he’d had half a chance.

“You ought to see her dance—like a music-hall.

I’ve had my eye on you

A long, long time!

That’s heredity. Wonderful thing, science, Topper. Ever thought of what they can do nowadays! Wireless. Incubators. Ether. Maybe hatch us out of eggs one day. My girl’s learning all about science. Maybe a lady doctor herself one day. Give her old father the right-about, eh?” He chuckled with complacent incredulity. “Heredity.”

Topper roused himself from his after-dinner doze to catch the last word. He stared solemnly at his bottle, perceiving half an inch of beer at the bottom. He raised it. “Heredity!” he muttered. “That was a good horse. Here’s to it.”

“Here’s to it,” echoed Barnabas, and threw back his head.

He felt cheered and reassured. Everything was all right. He had a job with the council. He’d go on doing work for them. Annie would come through all right, as she had done before.

He returned to the task of repairing Mrs. Brimsley’s stable with added gusto. Topper, poor fool, with his slightly defective brats, knew nothing about the joys of fatherhood. Carne of Maythorpe himself, with his funny little Midge, why, she was in a lower form than Lydia, although she was three months older. That just showed you.

One day Lydia would go to college and Mr. Holly would come to visit her and she would introduce him to all the professors and varsity men in caps and gowns and they would say, “Ah, Mr. Holly, many a poet lives only to pass on poetry to his children.”

Poor Annie. She’d never understand his pride in Lydia. A good woman, but low-spirited. No poetry in her. Never was. Always scraping and saving and thinking about domestic things. Still, a good woman.

Mr. Holly had not been to the movies for nothing. He knew the value of a good woman’s love. At the same time, he knew how affection can be lost by over-devotion to domesticity.

He settled himself straddling across the beam on the roof of Mrs. Brimsley’s stable and began to clear away broken laths, singing as he worked.

“Oh, I’m a donkey driver,

The best upon the line.

There isn’t a donkey on the road

That can come up to mine.”

He had a fine resonant baritone.

Mrs. Brimsley appeared at her back door with a plate of scraps from dinner. Bill Heyer and her boys had returned to the fields.

She emptied her plate into the swill tub, then turned, hearing the song.

“Her coat it is a beauty,

Her colour’s fair an’ pale.

Her ears are long, and she’s graceful, she

Has a beautiful curled tail.”

“Now what do you think
you’re
doing?” she called.

Mr. Holly poked his head up through a hole in the roof and grinned at her.

“Serenading
you
, sweetheart.”

“Get away with you—and don’t go scattering your nasty plaster into the corn-bin, poisoning my horses.”

She slammed the stable door, sending down a shower of plaster over the singing labourer; but he shouted to her irrepressibly. “Thank you for the confetti. Don’t you wish it was for our wedding?”

She turned to annihilate him; but he had another happy thought.

“Oh, and thank you for the nice steak and kidney pie you didn’t give us for lunch.”

“You!” she cried witheringly, and disappeared indoors, whence emerged at length the appetising smell of hot jam and baking pastry.

Cheered by beer and badinage, Mr. Holly scraped and hammered and sang, his head full of dreams for Lydia which found their way into his shouted ballads.

“She shall wear a cap an’ gown,

cap an’ gown,

cap an’ gown—

She shall wear a cap an’ gown.

My fair laidee!”

The immediate future, his precarious livelihood, the long tiring cycle-rides against the wind, his ailing wife, the feverish fretful noisy children, the squalor, the monotony, the tedium—all these sank like sediment to the bottom of his mind. On the surface frothed the heady foam of his dreams, and the impish pleasure of a new and fine idea.

The sight of Topper, piling his tools into a council wheelbarrow, reminded him that “civil servants” keep statutory hours, and he swung his leg over a beam and dropped lightly down into the stable straw. Chuckling to himself he walked across the yard, and knocked at the back door of the widow’s house.

She came, her comely face flushed with heat from the oven, her sleeves rolled up, her arms floury.

“Sorry to trouble you,” began Mr. Holly, mild as milk. “But could you oblige with a drink? Water would do—but my mouth’s that full of dust and plaster, and it’s a long pull home with the wind against me.”

“Why——” She hesitated, half amused by this shameless little man and half indignant, yet glad of any break in the dullness of her days, when Heyer and her sons were out working and the next cottage empty. Mrs. Brimsley was a sociable woman. She had never liked Cold Harbour. “I was just making a cup of tea for myself,” she said. “You get thirsty, baking.”

“And so you do building,” grinned Mr. Holly, entering the neat, glowing kitchen. “I’ll bet your pastry tastes better than your plaster. Thanks for the invitation—I
will
try a cup of tea—just for company, like.” He sat down in the Windsor chair beside the fire. “Not that I often drink tea.”

“You don’t, don’t you? And who said you were going to drink it now?”

“You did—at least—if you were a lady, you would.”

“Well, I’m—”

“A fine handsome figure of a woman.”

“You!”

“And a grand cook.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. I’m going to find out.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you came in here for.”

“A slice of your cake and a cup of tea.”

“Well, I’m sure it won’t hurt you. It’s quite plain cake.”

“And none the better for that I like a taste of butter and eggs myself.”

“I like your sauce!”

“Your cake’s not so bad.” He cut himself another generous helping. “Try a bit. Your tongue could do with a bit of sweetening.”

Mrs. Brimsley boxed his ears.

“Now, now. Don’t you take liberties. I might get a bit of my own back, and then where would you be? I’m the father of a college girl, I am, and must be treated proper. Going to be a lady barrister. Takes after her dad’s family. Brains!”

“Go on.”

“I’m going to.” Mr Holly helped himself to a great slab of saucer cheese cake, well laced with rum. He nodded over it with satisfaction. Poor Topper, he thought, a father of fools, cycling drearily back to his scolding Chrissie, while he, Holly, a man of brains, ate rum-flavoured cheese cake and drank tea with a widow. “Ah. Have you ever thought about heredity, Mrs. Brimsley? It’s a wonderful power. Never lets you down. You’d know Lydia was my daughter anywhere. Handsome. Now I’ll tell you something. A girl like that could go anywhere.”