The Long Week-End 1897-1919

by Wilfred R. Bion

  Heaton, almost beside himself with rage, hardly bothered to flash his curses at me. “Why didn’t you stop her you fool?” was all his chattering teeth permitted him to say.

  Curly now had a short pause for rest. This itself seemed like bravado as she was clearly the least fatigued of the three. When we drew near she moved off. We went on like this for another quarter of an hour; then Heaton’s anger blazed out; he threw a clod of earth at her. It was a good shot hitting her on the head. This, she decided, had frightened her. She broke into a brisk trot and in no time at all we had her locked in behind the gate of Bartram’s from which we had started. It had taken the best part of three quarters of an hour of violent exercise to get no nearer to Mundens.

  Just then Curly’s accursed offspring decided to moo. Curly heard, burst through a corner of the hedge and set off up the hill to investigate. Heaton set off too. Since it was not my cow my disinterest began to show. “Whoa!” I said gently from time to time—I did not want to upset Curly. As far as I was concerned Heaton and Curly could have the farm to themselves. But remembering the time when I had been hit in the eye by the cricket ball when lying on the ground fielding, remembering Curly’s charge at me with lowered head and very sharp horns, I decided to consider that part of the yard and environs denied to Curly if I occupied it—that is, unless Curly wanted it very badly. By mid-day Heaton, with my help of course, had got Curly back to Bartram’s field. He looked hot; I deemed it only civil to be breathing heavily.

  We locked the gate but did as little as we could to upset Curly. It was not Mundens, but there were, we decided, worse places than Bartrams. We cleared off hoping we wouldn’t be noticed.

  In the afternoon Mr Rhodes met us. “Well Heaton how was it? How long did it take you to get to Mundens?”

  Heaton gave him a wary, rapid glance and dropped his eyes. “She had a calf.”

  “Really!” Mr Rhodes seemed genuinely interested. “How long?”

  “Three weeks.”

  The conversation became professional; it was carried on without a trace of sarcasm or any undertone other than interest in breeding. I could hardly believe my ears as it was unthinkable that Mr Rhodes had not all along known about Curly and her calf. Any suspicion on that score had disappeared from Heaton’s mind, but I was sure it had been there.

  Then, “How much will you offer me for the calf Heaton?”

  “Oh, don’t know.”

  “Oh come on!”

  “I’ll see it when it’s ready to wean”.

  “I’ll hold it for you. Say a pound?”

  Heaton flushed up. “Nay!”—it was curious to hear the famous ‘nay’ in its proper context—”Nay! that I woan’t!”

  “Not bid a pound? Oh, come on Heaton, what’s the matter with it?”

  “I haven’t seen it”, said Heaton obstinately.

  “But you’ve seen the dam; she’s all right isn’t she?” Mr Rhodes was coaxing now.

  This argument went on for about half an hour, the father and son beating each other down, coaxing, wheedling, flushing angrily, complaining of being done-by unfairly. It was serious. I had never heard anything like it before, though I was to hear it again. Finally Mr Rhodes appeared to have had enough and to be preparing like a bored old cat, to dismiss his offspring.

  “Old Cow”—surprisingly the herdsman’s name—”will take Curly over to Munden tomorrow. You can go with him and see how it’s done.” And he stalked off.

  We went; it was done—easily; but we did not see how.

  Cow was a notorious drunk. I had witnessed a conversation between him and Mr Rhodes which surprised me, as the conversation between father and son had done. When talking cows, Old Cow was not drunk, however much alcohol he had on board. Mr Rhodes spoke as the Farmer whose word was law which he meant to see was observed: Old Cow spoke as a man who knew about cows and meant to see that what he observed was respected. Each was boss in his realm: each knew where the boundaries were drawn. Perhaps Curly respected the boundary that separates an expert cowman from mere men-calves.

  Cousin Bob met us at Munden. He would not allow us in the pigeon-cote because “the mess had not been cleared up”.

  “What mess?”

  “Oh, it was a bad business! One of my foremen went up there last night with a gun and blew his head off. It was a terrible mess.”

  This time neither Heaton nor I wanted to see.

  The sun shone brightly through the soft golden haze, the doves strutted and cooed, Bob spoke quietly to Heaton and me, but ‘up there’ was a ‘mess’. We went into the house and had lunch which was accompanied by an erratic semi-solemn conversation which was the more incongruous because nothing solemn was said. Curly spoiled our first visit to Bob; the foreman had spoiled the next one. Farming, so peaceful, so creative—’just the thing for conscientious objectors to war’—was for me violent and ruthless. Farmers taught their sons the hard way. Farmers, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, did they not ever love each other? Alternatively, if they loved each other, what were the rest of us up to?

  A month or so later Heaton said to Cousin Bob, “Clear it up all right?” For a moment Bob looked puzzled; then he picked up the conversation where it had left off. “Oh, that. Good Lord, yes.” So much for that. Why had he done it? Who cares? He’s not even news now.

  As I say, it was a nice day—’Soft as Sorrow, bright as old Renown’. Rooks sat about in the fields or flapped off lazily on our approach.

  “Those old beggars!” said Heaton admiringly. “If I had a gun they’d be off in no time.”

  “Yes” said Bob, “I’ve even carried my walking stick like a gun; they take no notice. Pigeons are even worse—and they do harm. Rooks are useful—well so long you two. See you soon.”

  We had reached the boundary of his farm and we settled into a steady stride back to Archer Hall.

  8

  ON Sundays spent with the Rhodes’s it was understood that we attend the parish church at Standon. Heaton, Kathleen, Faith, Mercy and I walked there and returned the same way afterwards. We hated it. One day Kathleen, who had brains and spirit, announced to Mr Rhodes in the presence of Mrs Rhodes and the family, that it was ridiculous to go. We were astounded. Mrs Rhodes, who always reminded me of the Mona Lisa and derived her frightening quality from the source that Leonardo must have known, pursed her lips ever so slightly, the smile fading out of her eyes; or perhaps, since they did not alter in any other way I can describe, it was my imagination that made me think so. She asked why. Kathleen did not flinch—let me be the sacred poet who only can erect an imperishable monument to her courage—and with eyes blazing in contrast to the block of ice that her mother had become, said “I think Mr Philson is a fool; he gabbles away”— and so he did—”like an old cockatoo!”

  When she had finished her denunciation Mrs Rhodes ordered her up to her bedroom. There, for the rest of the day, she stayed. Heaton and I—the men—were delighted but did nothing. I do not know what we could have done, but… well, it was her funeral, not ours. I was to remember my cowardice many years after in a situation which could not be so easily laughed off. Was I in love with Kathleen? ‘In my fashion’ perhaps, provided it did not cost too much.

  After lunch we went to the chapel in Latchford, a tin-roofed little box with ‘gothic’ windows and a patch of stained glass in one of them—’late lavatory’ would describe the style. Mrs Rhodes would play the harmonium to accompany the hymns. There we were, scrubbed, transformed yet recognizably the same. Saint Paul has described it beautifully: ‘Behold I tell you a mystery. We shall not all die, but we shall be changed.’ So we were! And though we might reasonably have died of laughing, in fact we did not dare. The change must have been something to do with religion for there was a young man who served in Fordham’s shop in Puckeridge who one day turned out to be the visiting preacher. He looked so odd—he was so odd—that we did not dare to hail him. Even in Puckeridge we could not have done that because he was so immeasurably our inferior. Yet there h
e was, standing there where the minister should, as if he had not even seen us. We were surely not completely disguised—the round-faced, snivelling, red-nosed urchins that we all were had not been completely soaped and scrubbed out of existence.

  There were also community secrets which overflowed the secular village boundaries, just as there were a few ‘holy’ jokes which flowed out through the congregational boundaries. Thus, when we sang ‘Shall we gather at the River’, we allowed our knowledge that the meeting house was on the banks of the River Rib to show in a few bucolic but holy leers of comprehension from which the visiting preacher, like our young man from Fordham’s, was excluded; he, poor sap, had very likely not heard of the Rib.

  Mrs Rhodes was not a smooth performer and from time to time we had to sustain a note rather longer than the score indicated while she searched for the next one. But we got through and at the end of the service our awareness that the religious chores for the day were over seemed to bring a certain de-tension. Indeed it was supposed that this was the occasion for the more regular lapses of Old Cow from the strict abstinence which divine service imposed on alcoholic refreshment. Eventually he realized that the obstruction could be obviated by simply staying away from service; the meeting house knew him no more.

  At Christmas the farm was ruled by the festival with which I thought I was familiar. It was cold. There was ice on the ponds thick enough to bear the weight of all the children of Latchford. Latchford was a small village but more than a hamlet; at that time it was inhabited entirely by men and women employed by, and therefore known to, Mr Rhodes—’therefore’, in those days, described an essential link.

  When I was invited for Christmas, which was a generously frequent hospitality, Heaton and I used to arrive from school some time before midday on Christmas Eve. All the children collected to gather evergreens for the decoration of their homes, village and farmhouse alike. That was a dirty, violent and ferocious hour, exciting in itself and in the expectations it aroused. Before this, thank heaven, the pig or pigs had been killed, and sundry geese sacrificed for the pre-Christmas baking and cooking.

  On those Christmas Eve excursions there would be thirty or forty of us, ranging in age from fourteen or fifteen down to eight or nine. We were armed with bill-hooks and hedging knives—ordinary pen knives carried by the small ones who invariably cut themselves rather than the greenery. Within an hour we had exhausted our enthusiasm, cut a huge stock of ivy, mistletoe from some abandoned orchard trees, and holly. This last was not popular; the leaves prickled and hurt far more than the gory, but grander, wounds of the pen knives. It was accepted that the biggest pile went to the Rhodes’s farm, not least because the parents of the village did not want to have the spotless order of their parlours destroyed by mess-making foliage. Heaton and I dragged our pile to the farm where we left it to the girls to transform into decoration. We were glad to leave it to them; they were glad to dispense with any ‘help’ they were likely to get from us.

  The arrangement worked well. Heaton and I allowed that the transformation they brought about was “pretty”. Kathleen, being the oldest, took charge. The kitchen, big, stone-paved, was done first because the cook, kitchen maid and Mrs Rhodes “had work to do”. By the time the girls had finished, the kitchen had become the centre from which scents of hot cocoa, freshly made bread and cake suffused the house.

  Shortly, children began to collect. They were the bell-ringers and the carol singers from the village who traditionally ended up at the farmhouse exhausted, hungry and thirsty. They mostly brought their own mugs for the cocoa; the fresh baked bread, butter and jam did not require plates. Refreshed, they performed some three or four carols very creditably before being plied with more to eat and drink—this time unrestrained by fears of impairing their voices.

  Then it was the turn of the handbell-ringers. They played two or three well-known carols—very well indeed they did it. It was fifty years before I heard such a performance again, at my own son’s school. Then more cocoa, cake and laughter. Finally they swung off into the night—no doubt to be at home and half way to sleep in less time than it takes to remember.

  The next morning Heaton and I were up in the icy dawn of an upland Christmas. Our stomachs told us we had been up for hours by the time it came to breakfast. Luckily breakfast was more than adequate to our needs. We started with porridge, sugar and cream. I still felt ashamed that I did not follow my father’s custom of eating porridge with butter and salt, but sugar and cream were too seductive. This was followed by liver and bacon or eggs and bacon. But at this season pride of place was given to a very big pork pie.

  The slaughterings which had already taken place were preliminary to the making of two hundred such pies cooked in the village bakery ovens and despatched in time for Christmas to friends and relatives of the Rhodes family, and to people so poor that they would not otherwise have had a Christmas meal. In addition to this they sent off some twenty fully dressed geese to similar recipients. I did not hear anything of the poverty of the recipients to whom the Rhodeses displayed such unadvertised generosity. It was wicked that such poverty existed; magnificent that such private generosity was unostentatiously displayed; astonishing that the Rhodes parents did not own a car or a radio. I did not hear of their reading a book other than a crudely written volume on English Eccentrics which was well-thumbed and repeatedly laughed over; its humour never staled.

  The consequence of appetite and opportunity for satisfaction could have been, but was not, foreseen by me. By the time that we should have been looking forward to Christmas dinner Heaton and I were feeling ill—very ill. The nature of the malady— disinclination for food, a sense of impending death, a craving for maternal love—was made worse for me by the absence of my mother. We sought the lavatories and unburdened ourselves. When we compared notes the malaise had gone and both felt completely able to do justice to Christmas dinner. Mrs Rhodes said we had overeaten ourselves. The suggestion seemed to be unworthy of her and of us.

  A hearty lunch was followed by similar, less acute, but more enduring symptoms. Some slight caution during the meal—not that Mrs Rhodes’s suspicion could be seriously entertained—and an eruption of the village into the fields and fresh air in the afternoon led to amelioration.

  On the following day food was a prelude to beagling. A faint queasiness—of the ‘art thou weary, art thou languid?’ but less spiritually inspired kind—prevented me from grasping what was going on. I would rather have been at the fireside with Kathy, but my stomach clamoured for the open air and prevailed over my heart. Heaton did not like Kathy; he made no secret of his belief that no man would waste time on anyone so “wet”. Anyhow, he confided, she was bad tempered. I did not think she was, but after I had heard her talking to him I could see what he meant.

  On Christmas morning, before the dinner was due to start, the pony trap was loaded with toys for all the children of Latchford. The trap was then drawn very unwillingly by the pony, Puck, through the village and the toys distributed. I do not remember hearing what the reaction of the recipients was, but I assume it was taken by most to be a part of uncovenanted wages. I doubt that they consciously regarded themselves as deprived of part of their wages so the employer could buy them a ‘present’. They were duly grateful but I neither saw, heard nor felt any abiding love. Mrs Rhodes did not entertain sentimental beliefs, but I had no doubt of her capacity for genuine concern for others.

  The beagling, which I did not experience through my skill at evading what no one was trying to impose on me, was part of the rough and vigorous farm sport. The greater part of the sport consisted in walking the farm stalking a hare or rabbit. Myxomatosis had not then made its attack on the rabbit populations, nor was it threatening as it is today to leave in its wake an immune race of rabbits.

  I have learned to look back on the kindness, of which I received so much, through a romantic haze. Nevertheless the abiding impression is one of an austere and ruthless life. Too many animals had to be killed; too mu
ch hard, unforgiving work had to be done; there were too few diversions for me ever to think of life on the farm as educative, healthy to body and mind, a painless instruction in the’facts of life’.

  9

  THE Hamiltons lived an entirely different life. Although it was farming, it was under glass on a large and lucrative scale. Mr Hamilton’s cultural aspirations were once expressed by buying a pianola, but he was too cultured to be able to tolerate the disillusionment this expensive toy brought him; he ceased, almost at once, to play it.

  While he was away at work, the household busy with its daily dustings and cleanings, Dudley and his brothers, Stewart and Colin, and I used to try our hand at the machine. Its mechanical attributes, which were in any case more prominent than its aesthetic qualities, were then given a thorough testing. A pleasing effect was obtained by playing the Moonlight Sonata at full speed. Dudley and his brothers also found a way of making the machine play the same piece backward. But despite these novelties there was a lack of variety in what could be done. This, combined with the danger that Mr Hamilton might catch us at it, led us to abandon our experiments. The possibility that Mr Hamilton might vent his hostility to the pianola on us for demonstrating, albeit unconsciously, its maddening defects was real; it could not be ignored by boys with a sense of reality.

  Mr Hamilton had a lively sense of his social obligations. He expressed these by being an officer in the Boys Brigade—the ‘B.B.’ as it was called by the cognoscenti such as ourselves. One day we went to an important anniversary parade. I remember how much 1 admired his military appearance as he stood in his officer’s uniform and little pill-box hat waiting to take us all to the parade ground in his Leon Bollet; and the parade itself—hundreds of boys in their black uniforms, white belts and pill-box caps strapped at a jaunty angle to one side of the head!