There were pussy grasses whose green fur stripped off between her fingers and thumb, until a curly rib remained, which she twisted in Becky’s hair, pulling until Becky called out, ‘You’re lugging me, Susan,’ for, like an unmanageable curling pin, it wouldn’t come out.
There were quaking grasses which nodded their little green and brown heads if she whispered near them, and rattled their beads in a box when the wind passed over.
There were delicate brown grasses which grew in hot woods among bilberry bushes, and carried strings of blue berries for her when she had no basket, and cock’s foot, feathery and plumy, whose blades made mouth-organs and squeakers, and timothy grass which made a cudgel.
There was golden grass which lasted till Christmas in the Staffordshire jug in the parlour, and black-headed plantains which called out for a game of soldiers.
There were seed-boxes to be popped, and pods to be rifled, dandelion clocks to tell the time, and green rushes to be plaited into whips, or to be peeled for making ivory baskets and white roses.
Susan wandered up and down the field paths, playing with the field toys, and hunting for the giant kex which Dan would cut to make a whistle or a musical pipe. Every day was full of happiness and every night brimmed with beauty, but the farm waited, waited, growing ripe for the harvest.
One morning the postboy brought a dirty letter with the postmark of a far-away village in County Galway. He carried it through the wood at seven o’clock in the morning and sat on a chair by the fire whilst Tom Garland slowly turned it over and then slowly opened it:
HONOURED SIR, (it began),
Will you kindly lend me the loan of a sovereign so as I can come to England for the harvesting.
With best respects to the mistress,
Your humbled servant
MICHAEL SULLIVAN.
It was the usual request from Old Mike for his passage money from Ireland.
‘Hurrah, hurrah, the Irishmen are coming,’ shouted Susan, dancing excitedly round the table.
‘Hold your whist,’ cried Tom, ‘I can’t hear myself think.’ He drew his leather bag from out of his deep trouser pocket, untied the string, and laboriously took out a sovereign. Margaret wrote a note to the post office and one to the Irishmen. Then she wrapped up the sovereign in tissue paper and sealed it in an envelope, for the boy to take back with him.
‘And mind you don’t lose it,’ she warned, as she gave him an apple for his trouble.
‘They’re rum folk, the Irish,’ said Tom to Joshua, as they sat over breakfast when the milk had gone and the house was peaceful again. There was, however, a wave of excitement in the room, a thrill, as if even the chairs rejoiced the Irishmen were coming, and the harvest, the culmination of the year’s preparation, was approaching.
‘They’re rum folk. They say things back’ards road in their country. Why, once Mike was going to send a sovereign home to his wife in Ireland, and what do you think he wrote? He said, “Dear Wife, I’m going to send you a sovereign. Have you got it yet?” As if she could get it before he’d sent it! They go to church on Sunday mornings, they call it Mass, and then they’ve finished with religion for the day. They dance and sing at night, only up to twelve of the clock do they keep Sunday. It’s heathen, that is. Dancing and singing on Sunday. But you know they worship idols in their religion, the Roman religion.’
Susan sat with open eyes and ears, listening, astonished. Whatever they did, everybody loved them, they knew no better.
‘They don’t talk the same as us,’ Tom continued, ‘and they’re very touchy. You have to be main and careful how you deal with them. But they are good workers, I’d never have an English haymaker when I could get an Irishman.
‘I remember once a swarm of bees went up to yon sycamore tree, the one by the garden wall, and one of the Irish, Dominick’s father it was, he’s been dead many a year, for I was only a little one same as Susan, he said he would get it for us. So up he goes and climbs along the bough to the swarm that hung there like a great pudding. We all stood watching him down below on the lawn there. He got the skep under them, but the bees swarmed all over him. They fair covered him in a black dust as it might be.
‘Didn’t he shout! He said, “Bring the gun and shoot them. They’ll pick me two eyes out, master.”
‘Well, the rest of the Irish, they laughed till their sides split, and we laughed too, I can tell you, but ’twas no laughing matter, for he was that swollen when he came down he couldn’t do any work. We had to blue-bag him from head to foot.
‘Mr Gladstone wants to give them Home Rule, but what would they do? They’d bring the Pope here in no time!’
Susan imagined a tall man, as tall as the beech trees, stalking in.
Everybody turned out to get the Irishmen’s Place ready. It was a cow-house in the old buildings, near the stable, in the wing that overlooked the courtyard, a place kept for sick cows, and for cows in calf. When Tom bought a heifer he put her there to get used to things, to settle down before she joined the cows in a big cow-house, where she would be as nervous as a new child at school, he said.
The walls were a yard thick, and a cobbled path came up to the door, but bright grass stretched away along its outer walls, leading to rose trees and little bushes on which the Irish could dry their clothes.
Next to it was the cart-shed with great double doors and cupboards in the thickness of the walls. Near by was a mounting block and a grassy bank with a lichened wall from which white rock fell in a sheet of blossom so that there was a continuous murmur of bees.
There were stalls for two cows, and an open space beyond, partitioned off by an oak screen, where some potatoes were stored for the winter. These were now removed and the place swilled. The wooden wall between the two stalls was rubbed smooth and polished like a mirror by cows rubbing their necks up and down through the long weary nights of pain. The window was a narrow slit in the thick wall, like the loopholes in old castles, through which a shaft might be winged down the valley at a marauding foe, but now it was stuffed with a bag, for enough light and air came from the door which stood with its top-half open all day long.
The building was swept clean with besoms by Dan and Joshua, and then they limewashed the walls. Five or six bags of fresh straw were laid on the floor at the back behind the partition. These were the beds in the Irishmen’s bedroom, ready for the hot sweating men to fling themselves down, half undressed, and sleep the heavy drugged sleep of the field worker, the heavy dreamless sleep of bees in a hive.
It was gloomy behind there, and the rats scuffled away when footsteps approached. If the rat-catcher could come along before the Irish, so much the better, but Tom fastened the little hole through which they entered and kept them out.
The cow-stalls formed the living room, the light half-room into which the sun shone all day. Here Dan and Joshua brought two long wooden forms and a round oaken table, marked by innumerable mugs, for it had been the Irishmen’s table for generations. Several milking stools, an iron cooking pot, a pile of old willow pattern plates and dishes, a pewter salt and pepper pot, some mugs and iron spoons completed the furniture of the Irishmen’s Place.
Tom Garland carefully hung their picture, an oblong wooden tablet with ‘NO SMOKEING ALOWED’ painted on it in rough characters of a hundred years before. Fire was the dread of every farmer, for the water supply was scanty, although the streams were so many, and no fire engine could get up those hills. A fire would mean absolute ruin, and Tom took every precaution against it. His own men never smoked, candlesticks had their extinguishers, and all lamps and lanterns were carefully guarded.
The Irishmen had one candle which was stuck on the spike in a tall iron candlestick, and fastened to the wall, but usually they sat outside in the starlight till they tumbled into bed.
Tom and Dan fetched all the rakes and two-pronged forks from the corner where they had been stacked for the winter, and laid them out on the Daisy Bank. The long scythes were lifted down from the barn walls, and honed un
til they gleamed in the playing sunlight which filtered through the overhanging elms. New teeth were made and fitted in the wooden rakes.
‘Come along to the dentist,’ called Tom, who loved his yearly joke. ‘Come along and have some new teeth,’ and Joshua laughed and pointed to his own toothless mouth.
Forks had new ‘stails’ made for them, and everything was overhauled and strengthened.
They were taken back to the barn and ranged in a row, with the scythes hung again on the wooden pins projecting from the high walls, over the enormous cornbins, deep in the shadows.
In another barn a barrel of beer stood waiting, softly dripping into a brown jug, the only sound except the patter of rats and mice, unsettled by the upheaval in the Irishmen’s Place. It stood on a pile of big stones, leaning against the whitewashed wall, with golden straw littered across the floor, all browns and creams, in the streaks of light which peeped in through the round thumb-hole in the door. Susan loved the smells in this barn, and the sound of the dripping beer, but more than all she liked the clear note of the brown stream when Becky filled a jug for the Irishmen. It was music like the tinkle of the triangle, and the song of the linnets in the orchard, and the chaffinch in the plum tree.
She always accompanied Becky when she took the key from the kitchen shelf – the beer barrel had to be locked up lest the Irish should get to it – and turned the tap to fill the big wicker-covered bottles.
Then came a time of waiting for the Irishmen to appear. Tom Garland scanned the sky and read the weather signs, he noted the direction of the wind and its changes, he tapped the barometer in the hall, and looked at the sky at night. He walked through the fields and rubbed the grasses between his fingers. He shook his head over the crops on the steep high fields, where tall grasses and dog-daisies hid the scanty growth beneath. He thanked God for the heavy crops on the lower fields, on the gentle slopes and by the streams.
The grass was ripe for cutting, the weather seemed likely to be fine. Everything was ready for the Irishmen, and a rumour came that they had been seen, they were near.
20
The Harvest
One day Roger barked with more than his accustomed fury, galloping in a semicircle by the rose trees and barn, as he strained towards the hill and some distant sound.
‘There’s summat up,’ observed Joshua to Dan, ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s the Irish.’ He walked over to the bank and looked down the hill. A little procession of men swayed slowly up among the fragrant gorse and bushes of wild roses which lined the path. In their hands they carried bundles, in red and blue handkerchiefs, more baggage was slung on their backs, on rough sticks, and great loaves of bread were tucked under their arms. They smoked and spat, and waved their hats to Joshua as he leaned over the wall to greet them.
Tom came hurrying out when Dan ran breathless with the news, ‘The Irish are here, they’ve come, Master.’ The big gate opened and the file of men came straggling past the garden into the yard, down the path to the kitchen door, to pay their respects. Old Mike came first with his blue bundle in his thin brown hand. He was a small wiry man, with a face bright and keen as a bird’s. He had piercing blue eyes under bushy eyebrows, uneven blackened teeth, and a pointed chin covered with stubble. He was a hard drinker and a hard worker, the men’s acknowledged leader and arbitrator, a great talker and a fighter and dancer. It was he who settled the men’s wages with Tom Garland, and arranged the hours of work and the terms for wet days.
His place was on the haystack, to receive the hay from the great piled wains, pitched to him with the longest forks, for he could make a cleaner, tidier, and firmer stack than anyone in the countryside. When Old Mike had finished, his stacks looked like houses, with straight sides and neat gables, a particularly difficult task where the ground sloped and dipped as it did in the stackyard.
His father had worked at Windystone, and his grandson would come in a few years to take his place. He intended to mention him to Tom in good time.
Over a blue and white shirt, open at the neck, showing his hairy chest, he wore an old coat, green with age, a cast-off from the farm years ago. It was made of good strong broadcloth, and would last for many a season yet, but he expected with luck to get another for best from the farmer this year. His trousers were strapped at waist and ankle, and on his head he wore a black clerical hat, whose history was unknown, but he had worn it before Margaret was married, in rain, wind, and sun, for many a year. It was inseparable from him, the badge which he removed perhaps when he slept, but certainly not during the day.
As he sat on the dresser with his back to the lustre jugs and priceless old china, sipping a basin of tea, and blowing the curling steam, a strong heady smell came from him in waves, travelling up to the ceiling and into every cranny and nook of the room, a smell of tobacco twist, corduroy, beer, and Ireland. Susan called it ‘The Irishmen’s Smell’, and sniffed it up eagerly with mingled fear and delight.
After Old Mike came Young Mike, his son, a man in middle life, as silent as his father was talkative, an indeterminate man with a faint smile, not a particular friend of anyone’s, for he didn’t work as hard as his father.
Malachi and Dominick, the twins, were slim young haymakers, good-looking, curly-haired, brown-skinned, with white even teeth and broad happy smiles. They were everybody’s favourites and were a constant source of fun, they were so much alike. They kissed Susan, the only men whom she allowed that privilege, and gave her a penny with the Irishmen’s smell all over it, which she kept in a little box, safe with its penetrating odour, to remind her of them when they were far away.
They asked after the Master’s rheumatism, and told Margaret that she got younger every year. They smiled at Becky and joked her, as she hurried backwards and forwards between kitchen, pantry and dairy, and out to the troughs. They patted Roger who quickly stopped barking and fawned upon them.
Next came Sheumas, old, quiet, dreamy, with a gentle smile and far-away look. He was polite and timid, he drank very little and guarded his money most carefully to take back to Ireland. He looked frail, yet he worked longer than anyone. Tom thought he was a bit soft in the head, he was always the last, ‘like a cow’s tail’, yet he was a good worker, clean and thorough.
The most important of the men were Patrick and Corney and Andy, the mowers. They were big, broad-shouldered, red-bearded men, relations of one another, brothers and cousins, quiet and courteous, but suddenly turning fierce and quarrelsome without any warning as they talked in Gaelic to one another. They were Susan’s idea of brigands, or Assyrians sweeping down on the Israelites. They tied their corduroy trousers with twisted grass below the knee, to keep them out of the deep wet meadows, and at the backs of their leather belts they carried sockets holding their whetstones. They brought their own scythes wrapped in sacking on their backs.
They all crowded into the already full kitchen, and ducked their heads ceremoniously as they wished, ‘Good luck to ye’, and ‘God bless ye’, and ‘Here’s good health’. They brought meat in the great iron pot from their Place to be cooked on the stove, and their surplus bread to be kept in the pantry, out of the way of mice or rats. Through the wide-opened door streamed the sunlight, dappling their trousers with golden discs.
The first night was spent over a few tots of beer from the barrel in the small barn. They sat outside in the evening sunshine, on long low forms near the door of their Place, telling tales of Ireland, of their wives, of the wage question, of cruel landlords and cattle-driving, and potato famine, which interested Tom extremely, and astonished Susan as she looked at their great frames and thought of the wild, savage, pagan land from which they had come, over the sea, like the summer birds.
Swallows and swifts hawked overhead, swooping down in frenzied rushes, chasing each other with shrill cries, dipping almost to the old hats rammed on the Irishmen’s heads. They swept round the ancient buildings, over the grey-blue roofs, and the mossy gables with their stone balls, keeping ever near their human friends, ex
cited and gay because the Irishmen had come and there would be companionship in the barns and cart-sheds.
The martins leaned out of their houses in the roof of the cart-shed, with their white breasts on their windowsills, joining in the cries of the birds and the talk of men.
On a high bough in the orchard sang a thrush, the same fellow who came there every night. Tom used to sit listening as he watched for the Irishmen coming and waited for the weather to become settled and the grass to ripen, and the bird sang to him alone, its long wonderful song, which he repeated under his breath in the soft whistle the animals and birds loved.
Now the men were here, and he stopped them to listen. ‘Hark to the throstle yonder,’ he said, and they took their pipes from their mouths and sat silent whilst the bird sang, and the great moon came slowly from behind the wood, so near, only just across a little field.
Dusk fell, and bit-bats came from the old cart-sheds below the gate, perched on the side of the hill in a sheltered ledge. They hung all day in the roof, above the plough, the chain harrow, the scarlet bonny rake, the rollers, and the deep blue and red haywains, but at night they came to hunt with the late swallows.
Susan waved her pinafore, to make them come to her hands, for she always wanted to catch one of these strange, wild, night creatures. They shot past her face, squeaking their tiny high cry, and their leather wings beat softly in the air, almost noiseless, but clear to her intense senses. She could see their unblinking eyes as she stretched out her hands, but they never stopped for her to catch one.
A nightjar whirred on the ground under the sycamore trees, and the moon rose high in the sky, shining through the dark firs.
‘Goodnight, Dominick, goodnight, Malachi. Sweet repose, think of me, when you’re under the clothes,’ she called out as she went reluctantly to bed.
The Country Child Page 20