by Angela Huth
‘I’m not putting that thing on, not for anyone,’ he chuckled. He winked at the girls, not unnoticed by Edith.
They turned away, waved. Ratty, leaning on his stick, watched till they were out of sight, impervious to his wife’s calling. He chuckled to himself. Best afternoon for as long as he could remember, that’s what he thought.
When they had left Ratty, Prue and Ag felt in need of a walk before returning to the farmhouse. They took a long way round through fields far from the burnt-out rick, and met Stella coming up the lane. Ag felt a slight shakiness in her limbs – the memory of Nancy’s stiff corpse with its burst tongue would not leave her mind. Prue twittered on about having seen a ghost of Barry that turned out to be his friend. Ag was not fully concentrating on the story. But Stella, striding towards them, Ag noticed, was calm as ever: the only one who looked as if the events of the afternoon had cast no traumas.
Stella herself, a yard or so from the others, saw intuition in Ag’s eye. Ag never missed a thing.
‘Cows all right?’ Ag asked.
‘They seemed to have settled down. No injuries.’
‘Poor old Nancy,’ said Prue.
The girls linked arms, marched towards the farm in step. It was something they had never done before, something it would not normally have occurred to them to do. They laughed at their own silliness. They sang. Their relief flowed tangibly between them. Their fierce closeness was apparent to all three, comforting, binding: it had been growing over the months, and the evening of the bomb it was silently acknowledged.
* * *
Joe and his father took several hours to bury the dead cow. Joe dug the deep grave – the ground was hard and dry – with the energy of three men. It was twilight by the time they finished. Walking back up the lane, spades in hand, they heard the first nightingale of the year.
‘Don’t know what he’s celebrating,’ said Mr Lawrence, whose gaunt face was grey with fatigue.
Supper was waiting for them in the oven. They quickly ate it in the kitchen, then joined the others to listen to the nine o’clock news. There had been an unusual daytime raid on Exeter: about fifty bombers.
‘Lawks,’ said Prue, ‘they’re coming closer.’
She was right. A few days later there were attacks on Bath two nights running. The Nazi destruction of Baedeker towns had begun. A new feeling of unease, which even the hardest physical work could not quite obscure, affected everyone at Hallows Farm.
With one accord, and with great difficulty, Stella and Joe continued to act in public as they always had. They avoided glances, they avoided working together more than usual. Joe continued to share his time in the fields equally with all three girls. The day the cows were taken away in two lorries, he allowed Prue to cry on his shoulder. Ag and he would still spend an occasional evening in his room for ‘tutorials’. But the thing that he found hardest to conceal was the extraordinary energy that had come upon him. He worked harder, for longer hours, than he could ever remember. Strangely, he suffered no attacks of asthma, usual in early summer, and never felt tired.
But a profound charge between two people is impossible to conceal completely from a beady eye. To the keen observer, a couple attempting to disguise their state surrender many clues. There’s the over-careless tone of voice when addressing the loved one, glances slanting away just not fast enough to escape notice, dozens of small coincidences that result in proximity. Ag was aware of all these things. In one of their rare private moments Stella and Joe agreed Ag must know something, though her own suspicions were also carefully disguised; and they did not care. Indeed, it was a rewarding thought that someone else shared their secret: though they themselves, beyond their certainty, knew little of what that secret constituted.
So few and brief were their moments alone that there was no time to talk, to analyse, to make declarations, to try to explain to each other the mystery of what had happened. All they could do was acknowledge the crystallizing of their feelings in broken, inadequate words, marvel at the existence of one another each day – ‘waking alert with wonder every morning’, as Joe said. They kissed, sometimes, very gently, for fear of conflagration. Strangely, they found themselves possessed of a great calm when it came to physical embrace: as if they knew there was time.
One day in early June, Mr Lawrence set Stella the task of rolling a field of young wheat. It would be a long day, he said, but if she kept at it she might finish by the evening. Mrs Lawrence suggested that, to save time, she would send someone down with a basket of food and a thermos for lunch. Stella, who had become almost as expert at ploughing as Prue, looked forward to the day – hours in the field alone with her thoughts.
Despite the departure of the cows, and no milking, the girls continued to get up at five every morning. It had become a habit, and as the weather grew hotter they were glad to start work in the cool of the early morning. Stella and Prue were usually assigned to some job on the tractors. Mr Lawrence had bought a fine second-hand machine, an International. Ag discovered the knack of harrowing with Noble: she enjoyed her days tramping up and down, hands firmly guiding the ungainly machinery behind the patient horse. It was still misty when Stella skilfully swung the tractor, trailing the roller, through the gate of the wheat field. The sky was a dull silver, gravid with more light than the human eye could discern, but proving its existence by making the emerald spokes of the young wheat shine. Stella looked up, warily. She no longer trusted clear, silent skies. She turned off the engine to plan her route. The cry of an early peewit came from the adjacent clover field. There was a powerful smell of clover (a single flower would, for the rest of her life, bring back that afternoon of the bombs, she knew), and hawthorn, and dew. Then, as she restarted the engine, these scents were joined by a strong whiff of paraffin.
The job of rolling was easy in comparison to that of ploughing a straight furrow. All the same, it required a certain concentration to make sure not a single green shoot went unpressed. The hours sped, as random thoughts of Joe danced in the landscape: the sky paled to a colourless sheen, and by mid-morning a brilliant sun was warming Stella’s bare arms.
Just as she was beginning to feel hungry – love, she had found, had increased rather than diminished her appetite – she saw Joe climbing over the gate, carrying a basket. She was surprised. She had expected one of the girls, or Mrs Lawrence herself, who, trapped in the house for so many hours, had a particular fondness for picnics. With the coming of the warm weather, she often made an excuse to take sandwiches to the girls in the fields, where she would join them for an hour on a rug under a hedge.
Joe waved, began to walk round the edge of the crop to the part of the hedge where Stella aimed to stop.
He helped her down from the tractor. She was stiff, sweating: dungarees were not much less hot than breeches. They sat under a single may tree, in the shadow of its pale crust of flowers. Joe unpacked the basket, spread out egg sandwiches, radishes, young lettuce and strawberries from the kitchen garden, a thermos of strong sweet tea.
‘Mother, in all her innocence, said as I was the least busy I should be the one to come. She even apologized!’
Stella laughed. ‘What are the others doing?’
‘Prue’s discovered a natural affinity for the mechanical potato planter. She’s roaring up and down West Field, planting at the rate of knots. Any luck, there’ll be no more sowing by hand. Your back better?’ He put a hand on her shoulder blade for no more than a second. Stella nodded. ‘Ag’s got a hard job harrowing: lot of stone. But she seems to enjoy it, all the walking. Dad’s gone off to fetch a load of clover seed. That’s got to be planted among the young corn—’
‘– to come up later,’ said Stella.
‘You’re learning. You’re not doing a bad job, either, by the looks of it.’ He glanced round the field. ‘A third done, I should say. You could be finished by seven.’
‘What I can’t understand,’ said Stella, lying back in the long grass, head on her arm, ‘is the whole point of rolli
ng. Why aren’t the shoots damaged?’
‘Rolling firms up the earth, giving them more support to grow from. They’re so feeble, so malleable, at this stage, they just rise up again soon after the roller’s passed.’
‘I’ve noticed that.’ Stella yawned, longing to sleep. ‘I think I’d rather enjoy learning more about farming.’ She screwed up her eyes against the pinpoints of sun that crinkled through the may.
‘I never intended to follow the family footsteps. I suppose I shall have to, now. Still, it’s not without its interests. I won’t mind that much.’
‘Yorkshire?’
‘Yorkshire.’
‘With Janet?’
‘No.’
‘What?’ Stella sat up, faced him.
He sucked at a long stem of wiry grass.
‘I’m not going to marry Janet. How could I, now? It would be a travesty. How could I marry Janet now there’s you, there’s us? He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty. Dr Johnson.’
Stella smiled, her mind a turmoil. They were silent for a while. Then Joe took her hand.
‘Are you going to marry Philip?’
Deliberately, Stella gave herself no time to think. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not. For the same reasons as you’re not going to marry Janet.’
The fluttering shadows, the brilliant haze of the young wheat behind them, the cloudless sky – all trembled, mirage-like, in Stella’s eyes. Joe pulled her to him, kissed her, then lowered her head to the security of his chest, arms about her.
‘I know that love is begun by time,’ he said. ‘See? I know my Hamlet as well as my Johnson.’
Stella laughed, pushing back the tears. ‘Ag must be a good teacher.’
‘Ag’s a very good teacher. An original brain behind all that awkwardness.’
‘I love Ag and Prue. And your parents.’
‘I do, too.’ Joe looked at her, half solemn. ‘I love you: that’s the hardest line to say. Must be. For everyone, mustn’t it?’
‘I only said it politely to Philip – unconvincingly.’
‘I hope this isn’t unconvincing.’ He kissed her hair. ‘Stella? Did you hear? I said it to you. I shall go on saying it from this day forth, for the rest of our lives.’
‘Joe. I must get back – I love you too – on the tractor.’
‘Hear that? A peewit. I love you, I love you, I love you: three times. How about that?’
‘I heard it this morning. God, I love you too. I keep saying thank you to God. He must be absolutely sure, by now, of my gratitude. How did it happen, Joe? How did it creep up on us?’
‘Time. From the safety of mere friendship, just observing. Being near. Liking. Liking more and more. Then, one day, the transformation scene. The magic.’
‘You saw first. I just kept on being puzzled by things: not understanding why I was put out if I hadn’t seen you for half a day.’
Joe laughed. ‘The intimations were all too easy to see. No: they’re subtle as the traces of a rat’s tail, to use Ratty language. Can so easily be missed by the untuned eye. When, I want to know, my Stella, was the precise moment, for you, that you realized …?’
‘I think …’ Stella hesitated. ‘It must have been when you held up the dead lamb, and skinned it.’
‘Fastest skinning I’ve ever done.’ Joe laughed again. ‘I was showing off, of course.’
‘Of course. And when, for you?’
‘I was teetering on the edge during They Can’t Black Out the Moon. When it came to Falling in Love Again – well, there was no further hope. Wings irreparably burned. It was like no experience I’d ever known. A kind of rebirth. I’m surprised you didn’t notice my peculiar state on the way home. I was terrified of touching so much as the sleeve of your coat. And the funny thing was, of course, what you never knew, was that you were falling in love again, too. Only differently from all those false alarms before. Properly.’
Again they laughed.
‘I only wish,’ said Stella, ‘we had more time to ourselves, more time to talk. I want to talk to you all day long.’
‘We’ll just have to wait for lucky chances, like this. Store everything.’
Stella, used by now to the warm smell of Joe’s wind-dried cotton shirt, again longed to sleep.
‘There’s one thing we’ll have to talk about, though.’
‘I know.’
‘What will we do … about them?’
‘We have a valid reason for changing our minds. A real reason. The war. If it hadn’t been for the war, none of this would have happened.’
‘No. True.’
‘But there’ll be time to talk further, to make our plans.’ Joe clasped Stella more tightly. ‘I’m terrified of touching you.’
‘Me too. There’ll be a time for all that.’
‘God knows, I … But not here, at Hallows. Not the barn, or my bed, or Robert’s cottage, or even the woods. Not with you.’
‘No.’
‘So we’ll both wait – magnanimously.’ Smiling, they stood up. ‘I must go. A man’s coming to see about buying all the stuff in the dairy. Christ, to think: if it hadn’t been for the bombs we both might have kept our silence.’
‘I wonder if that would have been possible? Heavens, I miss the cows. I didn’t think I would, but I do already.’
‘We’ll have a new herd, one day,’ said Joe. ‘But Jerseys, not Friesians. I’ve never really liked Friesians.’ He picked up the basket, rubbed the back of one hand over her cheek, strode away.
Stella returned to her seat on the tractor. The sun was almost too hot by now. She calculated the vast amount of unrolled field left to finish by evening, started the engine with wild heart, and dreaming eyes, and no doubts that she would have it done by the evening.
Harrowing the stony ground of the hill meadow was a tough job, and Ag liked it. It was a great deal more interesting, working with a horse, than was the endless couching which had been her lot of late. And she knew that soon after she had finished this field it would not be long before she must start thinking about the fruit on the plum trees, a job she looked forward to. If potato planting by hand was the most physically exhausting thing she had ever done, harrowing came a close second. The back was spared, but arms and legs were battered. To keep straight, and to keep continually encouraging Noble – who was inclined to slow to a very slack pace – required intense concentration. This concentration was a merciful antidote to the melancholy cast of her mind. Lately, the odd sense of her lack of obvious attraction, appeal, whatever, had returned to haunt her. While the constant flaunting of Prue’s conquests caused Ag little more than an envious smile, the more serious state of Joe and Stella (so plain to a sharp eye, Ag could not believe the Lawrences had not observed it) accentuated her own bereft state.
While Stella rolled the wheat field in a state of high ecstasy, half a mile away Ag plodded behind Noble’s bay buttocks, lashed rhythmically by his black tail as flies settled, fled, settled again. Half-way up the hill, the horse suddenly stopped. Ag called encouragement. He did not move. Ag went impatiently to his head. What could she do, stranded in a field a long way from the farm, with a horse that refused to move? She took hold of his bridle, tried to urge him forward. Noble yawned, baring grass-stained teeth. Flies flew from round his eyes. Ag tugged again. Noble tossed his head, but still would not budge.
Despairing, Ag looked at the ground ahead. Perhaps there was something that the horse wanted to avoid. She saw that there was.
Just two yards away, right in their path, was a plover’s nest with a sitting hen bird. Ag gave Noble an apologetic pat, kept quite still. The bird shuffled slightly, its feathers glinting, its eye jolted by indecision about whether to flee or stay. Ag took the bridle again, guided the horse away from the nest, which they skirted round in a wide sweep. Pushed into this sensible solution, Noble moved eagerly.
Often, during the rest of the day, Ag glanced back at the plover and saw it still there, sometimes visited by its mate. While ru
minating on the wisdom of letting broody birds lie undisturbed, some strange transference of thought wove into words what she saw as a signal: something to do with taking initiative, not letting a lifeless situation decay any further. Doing something.
Ag could never be quite sure at what point of that long, hot afternoon of the plover that she made her decision: the decision to take matters into her own hands, write to Desmond. There could be nothing untoward in a friendly letter. If there was no response – well, at least she would know where she was, and could give up the agony of hoping. It must be easier to accept nothing, she thought, than to toy with the endless possibility of something.
That evening, Ag began her letter. She wrote seventeen pages, carried away with her own descriptions of life at Hallows Farm. Dear Desmond, it began. Yours, Agatha, it ended. She posted it to his college in Cambridge.
Chapter 12
The fine weather continued. Haymaking began. Mrs Lawrence had little time to join the others in the fields. With just six months before the move, every spare moment was spent with accounts books, calculations, lists.
One afternoon in late June, she carried the basket of washed sheets out to the line. It had been hot and sunny in the morning. Now, the sky was overcast and a strong breeze was blowing.
She began the job – which she seemed to have been doing weekly for as long as she could remember – and which, in fact, she found not without its pleasure. There was peculiar satisfaction in the whiteness of the coarse cotton, the wholesome smell of the soap which would be blown away by the wind and replaced with a scent of sun and earth. How many sheets, she wondered, should she take to Yorkshire? Should she reduce her linen cupboard, sell as much of everything as possible? Lately, a dozen such questions had besieged her mind each day.
There were six sheets on the line, now. In the increasing breeze they billowed like low sails. Their flapping noise, softer than canvas above waves, was more like the wings of a flock of large birds. One of the sheets wrapped itself round Mrs Lawrence. She felt its wetness through her apron, her dress. It enveloped her like a ghostly cloak. She stood there, a moment of sudden and unusual fatigue, letting it do with her as it liked. Each side of her, companion sheets were now swollen huge with air, tugging at their pegs. Mrs Lawrence dreaded their falling to the ground. She had no energy to rehang them. While they cooed at her, the free sheet still twisted round her, making her suddenly cold. The solid mass of grey sky, she saw, had been blown into a feathering of small cloud, like the breast of a guinea fowl. The dogs were barking in the yard. Mrs Lawrence’s misery was so acute that the familiar patch of garden in which she was imprisoned was contorted into a place she no longer recognized. She was aware only of a turmoil of blowing white all round her, agitated cloud above, the nagging of the breeze on her skin. She felt close to drowning.