He led the way across the barn to a pen against the far wall. In it stood the bereaved ewe, she who had lost her lamb that morning, her rump still red from the birth, her attitude listless and dejected. But her tight-stretched udder was full of milk and she would make a good mother to the hand-reared lamb if she could be persuaded to accept it.
Jim opened the front hurdle a few inches and entered the pen. From his pocket he took a bottle containing balsam of aniseed. He got astride the ewe from behind, uncorked the bottle with his teeth, and poured some of the strong-smelling oil into the palm of his left hand. Kirren, still carrying the lamb, stood close by watching him and he gave her the bottle to hold. He then began rubbing the oil under the ewe’s chin and jaws and all round the outer rims of her nostrils. Protesting a little, she tried to break free, but Jim had her wedged between his legs, one hand firmly under her chin, and in less than two minutes the job was done. Satisfied, he let her go, and she moved away, shaking herself. He took the lamb from Kirren’s arms, rubbed a little of the oil on its hindquarters, and set it down on the floor of the pen.
Although the pen was quite small, the ewe did not see the lamb at first. She was busy moving her head up and down as though trying to escape the smell of the all-pervasive aniseed. But when the lamb began to bleat she turned and stared at it in surprise, in a way that seemed quite clearly to say: ‘Where did you come from? You are not mine. Or, are you?’ Jim put the lamb closer to her and she leant towards it, suspiciously, sniffing it without touching it.
But her sense of smell was badly impaired by the strong smell of aniseed; the lamb had the same smell, anyway; and in another moment or two, although still plainly mystified, she had stepped forward and was sniffing him close, working her way down his back with a nibbling movement of her lips, as though she meant to eat his wool. The lamb gave a short, rippling shudder and turned towards her, butting her side. Jim guided him to a teat and as soon as he began to suck, so his tail began to twirl. The ewe, looking over her shoulder at him, viewed the movement indulgently, giving a little whickering cry, quietly, deep in her throat. Ewe and lamb, so it seemed, were very well pleased with one another.
Jim emerged from the pen and lifted the hurdle back into place. Kirren gave him the bottle of oil and he put the cork back into it. They stood together watching the lamb as it pumped with increasing confidence at the ewe’s swollen milk-bag.
‘He’ll be all right now,’ Jim said. ‘They both will. She’s a good mother, this one. He’ll do well with her, though they’ll both need coddling for a while, just like all the others here.’
Kirren nodded, looking around at the many couples housed in the rows of hurdle pens. She turned back to Jim.
‘So that’s the last of the lambing for now?’
‘Yes, praise be.’
‘You’ve lost a great many.’
‘Yes, it’s been bad. I’ve never had a lambing like it before. Smith and Townsend are out there now, burying the last of the carcasses. Still, it could have been worse, I suppose …’
‘Could it?’ she said, doubtfully.
‘No, you’re right, it couldn’t,’ he said. ‘And I hope to God by the time the next batch start coming the weather will have improved a bit.’
‘It must, surely,’ Kirren said.
‘Yes, surely,’ Jim agreed.
They turned and walked to the open doorway and stood looking out at the rain. It was falling coldly and heavily; white shafts of it slanting down to splinter and splash on the cobbled ground.
‘It doesn’t look like improving yet.’
‘No, it’s setting in for the day. Your father will have had a wet ride to town and he’ll have a wetter one coming back. There’s a good two feet of water covering the bridges over the brook and Smith says it’s rising steadily. If your father’s got any sense he’ll come straight home when he’s finished his business at the bank.’
‘But he hasn’t got any sense at all. You should know that by now. He’ll stay chatting all day to the market folk, taking a glass with this one and that one, and won’t be home until after dark. But his mare usually brings him safe home. She has some sense, even if he has not.’
‘You are hard on him,’ Jim said with a smile.
‘You think so, I know,’ Kirren said.
‘He may behave foolishly now and then, but he’s not really a fool, you know.’
‘Isn’t he?’
‘No, he is not. He sees certain things clearly enough, and he has his own rough wisdom sometimes, if only you could recognize it.’
‘One thing at least I recognize ‒ he has a loyal ally in you.’
‘I’d like to think,’ Jim said, ‘that I am an ally to both of you.’
Kirren glanced at him; then away.
‘Yes, and so you are, of course.’
Staring out at the cold white rain, she seemed for a while to be lost in thought. But she knew that Jim was watching her and as the silence lengthened between them he saw that she was not quite composed. There was a frown between her eyes that suggested some disturbance of mind, and in the dark eyes themselves there was a look of uncertainty. He was about to speak to her when suddenly she turned away, going back into the barn to look at the newly fostered ewe and lamb. The lamb had stopped sucking now and was standing in front of the ewe, bracing himself, splay-legged, as she licked his body with vigorous tongue. Kirren returned to Jim at the door.
‘I needn’t concern myself about him, that much is obvious,’ she said. ‘He’s doing very well indeed.’
‘You will be glad, I daresay, to have your kitchen to yourself.’
‘Yes, and I must get back to it.’
‘Back to your baking?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Not to mention your hen and her chicks.’
‘And Tibby, the tortoiseshell cat,’ Kirren said, ‘who may well have had her kittens by now.’
‘Your kitchen is a menagerie.’
‘And you said I’d have it to myself!’
She looked out again at the teeming rain and pulled her shawl up over her head.
‘I really must go,’ she said.
‘But it’s raining harder than ever,’ Jim said. ‘I think you ought to wait a while.’
‘No, it’s all right.’ She flashed him a glance. ‘I must make a dash for it.’
He watched her run across the yard and vanish in a flurry of rain between the dairy and the byre.
Chapter Eleven
The rain continued all day, growing heavier all the time. By afternoon it was falling in torrents and the whole farm was awash. Special drains had to be dug to carry the water out of the yards. Ditches everywhere were overflowing, flooding the fields, and every track was a running stream. There was no great gale of wind; no thunderstorm; just a solid downpour of rain, hour after hour, all day long.
Jim, coming into the house at two o’clock, ate his food as fast as he could and went out again into the rain. The greater part of his flock, ninety-five ewes in lamb, were standing over their hooves in water in the home pasture and so chilled and dispirited were they that this new onslaught of rain seemed likely to pound them into the ground.
‘We’re taking them up to the pinewood,’ Jim said. ‘It’s the only place that’s not flooded and at least they’ll have some shelter there.’
By four o’clock it was almost dark. The men passing the kitchen window on their way to the milking-shed were dim, dark shapes in the gloom, hooded and hunched against the rain. When Kirren went out to the dairy, a distance of only a few yards, her thick cloak was soaked through and her boots filled with water instantly. And before she could attend to her duties there, dealing with the milk as it was brought in, she was obliged to light the lantern hanging from the beam overhead.
Down in the bottom of the valley the Timmy Brook had broken its banks and was spreading out over the meadows in a great sweeping tide. By half past six the meadows were covered and the water was still rising steadily. Jim went down with To
wnsend and Smith to take a closer look at it and found that the swirling floodwater had covered the lower part of the track. It was completely dark now and Jim carried a lantern. The three men stood at the gate and watched the floodwater rising until it covered the lower bar.
‘It’s worse than I’ve ever known it, even in winter,’ Smith said, ‘and I’ve been on this farm more than twenty years.’
‘What about the master?’ Townsend asked. ‘Will he come round by Lyall Bridge?’
‘I don’t know, but I doubt it,’ Jim said. ‘He doesn’t take much account of the floods and he won’t know just how much worse it is until he actually gets to the brook.’
‘The bridges will all be under three or four feet of water at least,’ Smith said, ‘and judging by the way it’s swirling here I’d say the current is pretty fast.’
‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ Jim said. ‘I’m going down to watch for him.’
‘Shall we come with you, master?’ Smith asked.
‘I reckon we ought to,’ Townsend said.
Jim looked at the two men, huddled in the pouring rain, their faces only just discernible in the glimmering lantern light. They had been working fourteen hours and for most of that time had been soaked to the skin.
‘No, there’s no need for you to come. Get off to your homes, both of you, and get yourselves into dry clothes. But there is something you can do ‒ you can call at the house on your way and tell Mrs Lundy where I am. Tell her I’ve gone down to the brook to wait for the master coming home.’
‘We’ll tell her, sure enough,’ Townsend said. ‘But are you sure you should go down alone? I don’t much like the look of these floods and what with it being so tarnal dark ‒’
‘Don’t worry,’ Jim said. ‘I shall take care, be sure of that.’
Leaving the main farm track he went splashing across the meadow through water that reached half way up his shins. The rain, although it had slackened a little, was still quite heavy enough to make the night as black as pitch and in the darkness the great meadow, so familiar by day, seemed like a never-ending waste, full of unremembered dips where thick mud sucked at his boots and made progress difficult. His lantern was no help in finding the way; it merely lit a small patch of rain and cast a will o’ the wisp reflection on the floodwater swirling about his feet; but a sense of direction was strong in him and he trusted himself to it with confidence. Still, he knew that caution was needed and when he felt the water deepen, he began moving very slowly, testing the ground with each foot before putting his weight on it. At last a willow tree loomed up at him and he knew he had reached the bank of the brook.
For a while he stood perfectly still, listening to the noise of the brook, waiting for instinct to guide him in choosing which direction to take. When he had made up his mind, he reached up to the willow tree and broke off a long, slender branch, and, proceeding with even greater caution, began moving rightwards along the bank, prodding the brook in search of the bridge. The floodwater now reached to his knees, eddying round him with a force that told him how swift the main current must be, and he felt the force of the main current, too, in the way it dragged at the willow branch.
He knew well enough which of the bridges Riddler was in the habit of using but finding it on such a night was a different matter altogether. He feared that his instinct had played him false ‒ that he should after all have gone left on reaching the brook ‒ and he was thinking of turning back when he felt the ground begin to dip and the water to rise above his knees and knew that he had arrived at the place where the bank sloped down to the bridge. And, prodding the bridge with his willow branch, he judged that the water covering it was, as Nahum Smith had predicted, between three and four feet deep.
There was no telling when Riddler would come. It could be any moment now or it could be as late as nine o’clock. Jim had to resign himself to the possibility of a long wait. And what if, after all, Riddler came home the safest way, by the bridge at King’s Lyall? ‘Then,’ Jim said to himself, ‘I shall have had my long wait for nothing.’ But he felt sure in his bones that Riddler would come by his usual route, and so it proved, for when he had waited perhaps an hour he heard the sound of hoofbeats coming across the flooded meadow on the far side of the brook.
Standing on the bank above the bridge, he raised his lantern shoulder-high, swinging it gently to and fro, at the same time putting one hand to his mouth and calling out in a great voice that would carry above the noise of the rain:
‘Morris! Is that you?’
Riddler, approaching the flooded bank, heard Jim’s voice calling to him and was able to pick out the light of the lantern glimmering on the other side. He had no need to draw rein, for the mare, who had already slowed to a walk, now stopped of her own accord, gently pawing the flooded ground where it began sloping down to the bridge.
‘Of course it’s me!’ Riddler called back. ‘Who else would it be, for God’s sake?’
‘I don’t think you ought to cross here ‒ it’s too dangerous,’ Jim called. ‘I think you should go round by Lyall Bridge.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ Riddler bawled. ‘I’ve crossed this brook in flood before and never got myself drowned yet, so stand aside, out of my way, otherwise you might get hurt!’
This answer was only what Jim had expected and he knew it was no use arguing.
‘Very well!’ he shouted back. ‘But keep a close rein as you come across. The current is running very fast.’
‘My mare’s not afraid of the water, current or no current, by damn!’
Sure enough, encouraged by Riddler, the mare picked her way through the deepening water and down onto the narrow bridge, and, with the flowing brook now up to her belly, began very gingerly to cross. When she was half way across, however, a floating log, coming down on the floods, struck her a sharp blow in the ribs. The sudden shock and the force of the blow, together with the swift rush of current, caused her to side-step on the bridge. She gave a high-pitched whinny of fear and the next instant was in the water, hindquarters plunging with a great hollow plump, forefeet wildly pawing and splashing.
Riddler, half drowned, held her up, first swearing at her and calling her names, then speaking reassuringly to her.
‘Come on, old girl, you must swim for it now. That’s the idea! You’re doing fine. Don’t let the current bother you. It’s only a yard or two more to the bank.’
Jim, although he could see almost nothing, knew from the noise what had happened and guessed what had caused the mare’s plunge. Knowing, too, that the swift current was carrying her downstream, he made his way along the bank, coming, after twenty paces or so, to the place where mare and man struggled together in the brook.
‘Morris?’ he called. ‘Are you all right?’ And Riddler shouted in response: ‘Damn you! Get out of the way! We’re coming up just there!’
The mare had great difficulty in mounting the steep, slippery bank but, urged on by Riddler’s shouts, she humped herself up and over at last in three gallant, heart-bursting heaves. But as she made the final heave, bringing her shuddering hindquarters up over the edge of the bank, Riddler was thrown out of the saddle. He fell heavily sideways, head and shoulders striking the ground, while one foot remained in its stirrup, twisted round in such a way that, try as he might, he could not pull it free; and as the mare cantered away, he was dragged along the ground beside her, bump and splash, all through the mud and the floodwater. Once, for a few brief seconds only, he managed to raise his head and shoulders, reaching up with outstretched arms, trying to catch at the flying reins.
‘Whoa, you fool, would you kill me?’ he roared. Then he fell back again into the mud.
The mare passed close enough to Jim for him to sense what was happening and as she went cantering over the meadow he heard Riddler’s desperate shout. He too shouted for her to stop but she ran on, frightened and confused, making instinctively for the gate that led onto the main farm track. And Jim, splashing across the meadow, followed her blind
ly through the darkness.
The closed gate brought her to a stop and she was waiting, all in a tremble, when he at last caught up with her. Soothing her as best he could, he hung his lantern on the saddlehook, and gathered up the trailing reins. Riddler was unconscious now, but still alive. Jim freed his foot from the twisted stirrup and heaved him up into the saddle, holding him there with one hand while he opened the gate with the other. Still speaking quietly to the mare, he led her up the track to the farm.
Kirren, hearing him in the yard, came out at once to the porch door. She watched him carry her father in.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘The mare missed her footing on the bridge. She had to swim across the brook. Your father was thrown out of the saddle but his foot got caught up in the stirrup and he’s been dragged right across the meadows.’
‘Is he hurt badly?’
‘I don’t know. But he’s unconscious and he’s soaked to the skin. We must dry him and get him into bed. Can you put a warmer in?’
‘Yes,’ and she went to see to it.
Jim laid Riddler down on the mat in front of the fire and stripped off his clothes. He gave him a good hard towelling and rubbed warm brandy into him; into his chest, his stomach, his back; even into his legs and feet. Then he wrapped a warm woollen blanket round him and carried him upstairs to his bed. Kirren had put a hot brick into it, wrapped in a thick flannel cloth, and this he pushed down to Riddler’s feet. She had placed a lighted candle nearby and now she was lighting a fire in the grate. The sticks, kept warm in the kitchen hearth, made a good fire immediately, and she put on a number of small dry logs. She rose from her knees and came to the bed.
Riddler lay flat on his back, with the bedclothes drawn up to his chin, his queer, crooked face as pallid as yeast, his damp hair streaked down over his skull, and a slow trickle of watery blood oozing from a cut above one eye. His breathing was so shallow and quiet that he seemed not to breathe at all. Kirren touched his face with her hand. She looked at Jim.
‘How bad is he, do you think?’
The Two Farms: A moving family saga set in a Victorian farming community Page 17