The Worm Forgives the Plough

by John Stewart Collis

  When the pickers had reached the plum harvest, my job was to prune the blackcurrant bushes. This means cutting away all the branches that had borne fruit, leaving the fresh shoots that had already grown up. For this purpose I used a long pincer-like shears with which I could reach down and cut right on the stool. As I went along I often came upon currants that had been left over by the pickers, a certain number of which I brought home every day, during which time I was freer, more completely free, from constipation, pardon my mentioning it, than I have been in the course of my life.

  It was a lengthy but stimulating job. I made huge piles of the discarded branches, leaving behind the already renewed bushes which should repeat the work of the others next year, I find such well-known physical facts to be metaphysically most exhilarating. The ordinary is rather more extraordinary than the extraordinary, just as the material is rather more immaterial than the immaterial, and it is surely the mark of an inferior mind to be moved to wonder by the exception instead of the rule. The rule beats the exception at its own game. It is not the rabbit out of the hat but the rabbit out of the rabbit that is so surprising. No phrase such as ‘Nature’s fecundity’ is able to dismiss it. I confess it still stirs me at intervals, this the most conspicuous of all phenomena, the recurrent increase, the everlasting something out of nothing. Contrary to what one might expect. Granted, it is not quite something out of nothing: I’m surrounded by plums, apples, currants, hard and concrete substances miraculously appearing, but they are made out of earth, they are made out of air, they are the earth, they are the air – granted, but the circle is continued eternally, the washing is always taken in all round, yet no bankruptcy, no waste. The mind, made rotten by political economy, expects otherwise, fears waste. I still feel nervous when I throw away a piece of bread. But in Nature nothing can be lost, nothing wasted, nothing thrown away, there is no such thing as rubbish. It might be good for us if we threw things away a bit more, so that we might grasp that they cannot be destroyed – this, the first of the miracles of God.

  As a matter of fact I see there is a tendency in some quarters to take this uneconomic and metaphysical view of the matter. There is the famous case of the coffee growers in Brazil who in 1938 threw away six hundred thousand bags of coffee every month. That’s the spirit.

  About this time, several tons of Shoddy were delivered and deposited on the track beside the fruit trees. Previously shoddy had been merely an adjective as far as I was concerned. I had heard of shoddy goods or a shoddy person. I was interested to come upon the noun. It consisted of huge bundles of woolly material. It was the gleanings from cloth factories, fibres that had been thrown away, rubbish from the industrial angle. We proceeded to spread the stuff out, covering the ground between the trees with it as a species of manure. It was pleasant to see this ‘rubbish’ thus enter into a new mode of activity, and in obedience to the rule of eternal return, dedicate its action to the cause of Agriculture.

  20 Threshing Scene

  The small corn harvest was gathered simultaneously with the fruit, and as I did not take part in this to any complete extent, I shall say nothing about that operation in this place. But in early September I took part in my first threshing experience.

  Since there was only one rick to do, it was not very elaborate. The old-time affair was used – the hired thresher with steam engine. We got going by about eight o’clock – and a few extra men came from outside to give a hand. The owner of the engine, having set the thing going, walked round looking on with a somewhat superior air. Indeed I was surprised to see how nearly he conformed to Hardy’s description in Tess of the owner of the tackle who came to the farm that employed Tess. It was none of his business to lend a hand or in any way to take part in proceedings once he had started his engine. Occasionally he went to one of the bags and took a sample of the grain in hand and looked at it knowingly, then moved round rubbing the forefinger and thumb of his right hand in a thoughtful manner in order to cancel his absence of thought. it was clear that for him also ‘the long strap which ran from the driving wheel of his engine to the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line between agriculture and him’.

  There was no elevator and my place was at the shaft where the straw came out from the thresher, my job being to serve it to the rick-makers, Morgan and Arthur Miles. Quite enough of it came out to keep me engaged, and quite enough shreds went down my neck and back, since I had not grasped the necessity of a tightly buttoned shirt for this affair. There was no let-up for hours, and owing to the prickling discomfort I began to feel it as an endurance test, for as the rick grew my handing up became increasingly harder; but I had no intention of giving any hint of fatigue, and in any case always rather enjoy that kind of thing. But I was quite blind to the scene as a whole, seeing nothing in fact but my own ever-falling straw.

  In the interval for a morning meal, Mrs Miles, feeling the need for self-expansion, shouted (as usual as if against a high wind) – ‘How do you like this wurk, Mr Collis, this is wurk,’ etc., rather embarrassing everyone else as well as myself, I thought.

  Before we knocked off, the remainder of the rick had to be covered with an old tarpaulin which we dragged out of the stable close by. We unfolded it gradually, and as we did so more than one nest of mice came to light, mice large and small and tiny. They began to try and scuttle away, the baby ones running round helplessly. Arthur grabbed at them with his enormous hands, catching two or three at a time. He squeezed them to death and stuck them in his waistcoat pocket. He disposed of a large number of them in this manner. He took a mouse, squeezed it between his forefinger and mighty thumb, stuck it in his pocket, then grabbed another, squeezed it and likewise stuck it into his coat or waistcoat until he was bulging with mice. At first I couldn’t imagine the object of this collection. It turned out that they were for his cat at home. On returning he would call the cat to him and steadily produce mice from his person. Not so much for love of the cat, I gathered, as in order to encourage further research in this direction.

  Before finishing for the day I made a typical beginner’s faux pas. I left a prong lying on the ground. Arthur nearly stepped on it. And did he swear! Certainly he had every cause to do so. Failing to stick a prong upright and leaving it on the ground is the sort of crazy thing beginners do, being blind to the extreme danger of such a thing.

  21 While Potato-lifting

  Time marched on. Each day seemed long, each week short. It was already autumn. What is the salient characteristic of autumn? The spiders’ threads in the early morning frost. I am not thinking so much of the circular networks, marvellous as these are, hung along the gate; but rather the threads that are strung across everything, so that if you bend down till your eye is level with the field you can see a white veil over the whole expanse. They are everywhere, on everything. ‘Do they drape the cannons in France?’ asked Mr Ralph Wightman, true poet, in a striking image, the other day. To look down at these things is like looking up at the stars – we are baffled by quantity.

  The time had come for potato-lifting. I was particularly interested in the potato field. I had been on it from the start, manuring, planting, harrowing, hoeing, shinning. At intervals I had examined the growth of the potatoes, minutely, from the appearance of the shoots that look like white worms coming out of the original potato, till down under, that one thing had produced many things, and sent up whole bushes which then flowered very prettily indeed in August – a lovely sight, strangely unsung. By which time the original potato, the cause of it all, having rendered up its virtue, had become a squashy bag of pulp.

  A great deal of agriculture is simply common sense modified by experience. Thus, even if I assumed ignorance in the reader about potato-lifting, I know that without my help he could say in advance almost exactly what is done: first, the potatoes ploughed out; then the pickers with buckets each go up a row filling sacks already spread out at given distances along the lines; while at the same time a horse and a cart or tractor and cart take the filled sacks
away. That is how one would imagine it is done: and that is how it is done. We did one thing here though, which I never did anywhere else since. The soil was very damp and the potatoes were clung with clay. Before we bagged them we went up the rows with a specially designed hand-fork which we used to dig the potatoes out of their clay covering, leaving them in heaps to dry.

  This potato harvest calls for really dry weather. And one seldom gets it. We got plenty of rain. It was very clayey soil. Clay is not always called clay in the agricultural world; it is often called sand. A sandy soil means earth that is not very thick and cloggy. Clayey soil means thick stuff, with much mud in winter. It was the latter here. The mud was terrific. It clung to one like glue. I soon qualified not only as a clod-hopper but also as a clod-lifter. With such a soil potato-lifting in rain provides considerable discomfort. It was so extreme in sheer wetness, slipperiness and muddiness that I enjoyed it.

  Some extra hands came along for this job, also, casual labour sent out from the local labour exchange (foul official words all, ‘hands’, ‘casual’, ‘labour exchange’, containing the maximum of dehumanization). One was an actor. I worked beside him as we went up our respective parallel rows. There is nothing like conversation for making this kind of job go well. We talked about all sorts of things. We got on to psychologists for some reason. ‘I hate their style and their outlook,’ I said. ‘I hate their motives,’ he said. We soon turned to the theatre. ‘What is the point in T S Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral?’ I asked. ‘Is it that egotism is always the real reason for our actions?’ ‘I believe the point is,’ said he, ‘that men do the right things for the wrong reasons.’ At this point unfortunately our respective lines came to an end, and circumstances were such that we would not work together up two fresh rows, and so we parted. His name was Stanley Messenger, and I hope he is still posted somewhere in this world.

  When he had gone I reflected upon how companionship depends upon what we have in our heads and not on what we have in our pockets. If one of us had been very rich and the other very poor it would have made no difference. The gulf between people is not one of money, it is one of mind. If I am working with a man who has nothing in his mind, with whom one can exchange no idea, no knowledge, no opinion, no witticism, then there is a real cleft between us far greater than anything that could be caused by class or money. All very obvious, perhaps. But I mention it because I continually have day-dreams of a time when lots of people would come out into the fields and love working with their hands, and also love working with the mind, their manly heritage, and make such jobs as these go quickly and delightfully. It will be a sad criticism of life if we have to say that such a dream is futile. Anyway I wouldn’t ask much more than this of my Utopia – easier to come by, more worth coming by, than the honey-sweet Nowheres of the pseudo-poets.

  22 Hedging and Ditching

  After this I took on a new job for the rest of the winter. There was much hedging and ditching to be done, and it was delegated to me. This opened up another field of labour for me. Hitherto, hedging and ditching were merely terms residing in the top floor of my head. Now I could take them down and look at them. The hedges on a farm, or anywhere else, do not stay quietly dividing the fields. If left to themselves too long they invade the fields. During the agricultural slump nearly all the hedges on farms became neglected and out of hand. I have seen farms where shoots from hedges were advancing out into the fields in columns of fours. We are accustomed nowadays to statistics such as ‘if everyone saved one lump of coal per day, this means a national saving of twenty thousand tons a year’ or ‘one old kettle given to salvage by every housewife means a squadron of Spitfires’ or some such nonsense (if it is nonsense). In the same way the number of acres lost through neglected hedging might amuse a statistician’s mind.

  Whatever the national loss by such neglect, it is clear that hedges on any given farm soon get out of hand, growing far too high, straggling all over the place, and clogging the ditches. It is the job of the hedger to cut them down to about the height of his waist, to foster growth where there are holes, to ‘lay’ them where they are too thin, and to clear the ditches beside them.

  After due instruction I approached the hedges of this farm with the necessary implements – a bill-hook, a hook, and a slasher. I soon made an impression on them. No job has more to show for it. I would come to a great straggling growth with an accompanying ditch quite concealed under grass and hedge shoots, and presently I would have reduced a number of yards of it so that it was unrecognizable. A complete transformation of the scene. The whole character of the place changed, and beside the hedge, a neat ditch. As I went on at this, week after week, I felt I was making my mark on the farm. Especially at one place where a field sloped down to a river-bed. The hedge at the bottom came out several yards into the field, and my progress was almost like changing the landscape.

  Incidentally, that river-bed was an eerie place. There was a sort of little glen running along at the bottom of two converging slopes. Indeed, except for its smallness it was a perfectly genuine glen, with trees and steep rocky clefts, at the bottom of which was a river-bed. But one thing was outrageously lacking. There was no river. During most of the year one could walk along the smooth, cliffed waterway. It was like going along a road where no traffic ever passed, where no man trod – a ghostly place, a haunted, silent, deadly lane.

  At this job I was paid by the rod – that is, I did it as piece-work. I found that if I kept at it I was able to make about the same as being paid by the week in the ordinary way. But this was because Morgan gave me a generous cash measurement, not exactly on a par with the ‘too little for three-farthings’ man.

  Doing work by the piece opened my eyes to the difference between Space and Time. Philosophers are pleased to inform us that we live in a Space–Time Continuum and that both are the same thing. I do not question it. But I am free to say that in the agricultural world they are mighty opposites. When you are working by the hour, time drags. When you are working by the space, time flies. Doing piece-work you want to cover so much ground, so much space – and so time moves fast. If you have no space to conquer but only time – then time stands still.

  Apart from this, hedging is certainly not a monotonous job, because each hedge is different and there is so much to show for the work. But even so one can have enough of a good thing, and not for worlds would I take on a roadman’s life. I began to weary of hedges after I had done only a few; but to see nothing but hedges all your life, to hang perpetually on the periphery of agriculture, never in it, hedged off from it, and do the same thing every day, must be the devil of a business, especially in winter. I shall never again dash along the roads in a motor car without knowing just why the ditches and banks are so trim and neat.

  There was plenty of firewood to be got out of these hedges, which came in very useful, for every week I could empty a cartful at my house, the boss not having the least objection to my doing so. The well from which I drew water was some distance from the house, a journey through two fields and over two fences. So I became ‘a hewer of wood and a drawer of water’. That popular phrase, with the adjective ‘mere’ in front of it, suggests that here is the bottom rung in the ladder of life. Well, it may be. But if so, I cannot say that I want to climb the ladder much. I have no objection to these simplicities.

  Still, I could have done with a bit of coal. But it was too much ‘out in the wilds’ for a delivery. So I had to cut down some trees also in order to get through the winter. Luckily the fireplace was so big that I could put in long logs and thus save much cutting up. When they were too long to fit, I let them come out into the room. When I was behindhand in my cutting I sometimes sawed them in the fireplace in the evening while the fire was going. There were some very cold spells, and I became more than a hewer of wood, I became a hewer of water. I often didn’t go to the well, and when the rain-water froze in the tub I had to axe it . . . However, space forbids further trivialities of this kind, for I am eager to get
on to Part Two of this book, and offer the reader a change of scene.

  PART TWO

  A FARM IN SOUTH-WEST ENGLAND

  1 First Day

  ON THE EVENING before the day I was due at the farm – the time being March 1942 – I unfortunately took something that disagreed with me, and felt ill at intervals throughout the night and no better at six o’clock the next morning. But feeling that I should stick to the engagement, I got up and cycled down (a twenty minutes’ ride) to the farm, arriving punctually at seven.

  I found no one in the farmyard. But soon the boss’s son, a boy of fifteen, came out of the dairy and told me that I would find his father at the other dairy where there had been some mishap that morning. This meant a ride to a far portion of the farm, which was about a thousand acres. Very welcome, indeed a godsend, this ride, for in my present state I knew I would be actually sick if I did any work. So I took my time and in due course arrived at this other dairy where I found the boss. He instructed me to go and help the carter who was getting a load of hay from a certain rick. I didn’t follow the geography of the instructions, but I gathered that it was necessary to go back the way I had come and then pass further on. But when I reached the farmyard again I decided quite definitely to fail to find the carter, still feeling certain of sickness if I bent my body about in the slightest degree – which would be a maddening way of starting work at this new place.