In the Middle of the Fields

by Mary Lavin

Counting out her change, Christy took a number of brown paper bags out of his pocket. Miss Lomas hustled over as he put them on the table. Sugar? Butter? Small quantities, but that was what they’d tacitly agreed. And bread? Yes, but why two loaves? They would get stale. But what was this, though? More tea? More butter? Slowly she understood. Going over to the press she got down two canisters, instead of one, two butter dishes and two earthenware jars for the sugar, and started to divide out their rations. She was about to empty a ration of sugar into one of the jars when she saw there was still a bit of sugar in the bottom of the jar. Startled, she looked at Christy for direction. Silently Christy gave it. Diving in his dirty hand he transferred a fistful of it to the other jar. Then with a down-turned thumb he indicated she could go on pouring. Thus was shared out the dregs of the Garret bounty.

  Making sure to use a spoon of tea from each caddy, Miss Lomas made a fresh pot of tea, and put the teapot on a tray along with two cups and saucers, ready to be carried into the dining-room, when Christy reached out roughly and took off one cup. Again with a down-turned thumb he indicated that she was to fill it. Miss Lomas looked uncertainly at her own cup. To eat in the kitchen would save steps, and if she didn’t get a cup of tea quick she’d drop. Also, with the servant girl gone there would be no loss of face. She left down the tray and sat herself opposite Christy.

  The meal was eaten in a brutal silence. Miss Lomas was so hungry she gulped down the tea and dragged at the thick bread as voraciously as Christy, who always had the manners of a pig. All the same, she was grateful when after he’d finished, he went over to the sink and held his cup under the tap. At least he didn’t expect her to wait on him.

  What would he do next, she wondered? Would he be going over to Garretstown? She guessed that if she asked he would not answer, so she made what she could of the fact that when he went out he wore no coat. Through the window, she saw him walking around the yard. From the way he poked his head into one shed after another she thought he was looking for something until he went over to one of the field-gates and leant across it staring down at the grass, she felt that he was probably seeing Brook Farm for the first time.

  Looking around her, she felt she herself was certainly seeing the kitchen for the first time. She had never spent much time in it. And this, she now saw, had been a mistake. It was nowhere as clean as she’d always insisted the rest of the house be kept. She rolled up her sleeves.

  Miss Lomas spent the best part of the morning looking for things. Where were the scouring brushes kept? Where on earth were the floor­cloths? And in searching for these things such dirt came to light behind presses and on the top shelves of cupboards. She could hardly credit her eyes. When Christy got back late in the day, she had heaped up in the middle of the floor, a clutter of rags, old newspapers, empty cartons, and half-empty sauce bottles, he stood in the doorway and let out an oath.

  ‘Have you turned the place into a dung-heap already?’ he said, and wheeling around on his heel he went out again.

  Tears of humiliation came into Miss Lomas’s eyes. Her head ached. And she was hungry again. Had Christy gone off for the evening? Could he be so spiteful? Perhaps he was gone to buy food for their supper? On the other hand he hadn’t asked her for any money. As the evening wore on and there was no sign of his return, she lost heart. If the hens had not stopped laying, she could have had an egg. Or if there was anyone to wring the neck of one of the old hens she could have put it in a pot. But perhaps it was as well not to do that, since somehow or other in their new partnership she felt that everything out of doors was Christy’s province. She could boil up a pot of potatoes, of course, but she’d have to go out and dig them, and, although her footwear was not as foolish as that of Miss Garret, her shoes weren’t up to the soft trackless loam of the potato patch, and in the end she made do with another cup of tea and a few more cuts of bread.

  At twelve o’clock that night when there was still no trace of Christy, Miss Lomas climbed the stairs utterly exhausted. It was near morning when she heard him come in. It would hardly have seemed worth his while going to bed at all except that judging by the way he was stumbling around he’d be safer off his feet than on them. More to contend with. Miss Lomas sighed. Up to this she had not known him to drink hard. Indeed he had not been one to consort with anyone much less with hard drinkers. She listened for a while to him cursing and muttering. Where had he been? Worn out, at last she fell asleep and did not wake until late. The first thing that struck her next day was the deadly silence of the house. By contrast, outside in the open-air the sound of birds singing and cattle lowing was so loud she might as well have been out in the fields. Small wonder, she thought, when going down the stairs, she saw the hall door was wide open. It had blown open in the draught from the kitchen door which was also wide open. The whole house was as cold as a windowless ruin. Shivering, Miss Lomas closed the doors, and unconsciously took comfort from the solid blocks of furniture and the fat padded armchairs. It would take some wind to blow them away.

  But although she had closed the doors the sound of lowing cattle was as loud as ever, louder in fact. Running to the window she was just in time to see a young lad from Garretstown going off down the road driving the entire stock of Brook Farm, cattle and sheep, ahead of him, and belting them onward with George’s ash plant. Every field on the farm was empty. Every gate was open, including the road-gate.

  ‘Christy! Christy!’ she shouted, and she ran to the foot of the stairs. But even when she went up and banged on his door, the only sound she heard in the room was the creak of bed-springs as its occupant turned over heavily. She went downstairs again. For years she had been handed a cup of tea in bed before she put a foot on the floor. Now she’d have to wrestle with the range.

  The range went against her. It was noon by the time she got the kettle boiled. There was no stir from Christy. It gave her a queer feeling to think of a grown man lying all day in his bed like a hog. She tried not to think about him as she went about gathering up the heaps of sweepings she’d been too tired to collect the night before. Then, unable to stand the hunger any longer, she foraged out an old pair of Christy’s boots that he had long ago discarded and went out to the field to dig up a bucket of potatoes.

  There wasn’t much butter left to put on the potatoes, but she ate them greedily all the same, and after she’d eaten she felt a lot better. Putting a plateful of the potatoes into the oven for Christy, she went into the dining-room and looked around to see what was to be done there. Before Joss died, it had been her intention to renew the loose covers on the chairs, and indeed, she’d meant to have the room re-painted and re-papered. Now she could not help but feel she’d been caught on the wrong foot. Telling herself however that soap, water and good honest sweat could work miracles she boiled up a tub of water and whipping off the covers she plunged them into the suds. Vigorously she doused them up and down, but very little dirt came out. Instead the water began to turn pink. The dye had run. Ought she to have put something into the water to keep the colour fast? Salt? Soda? What? Well, at least they would be fresh and clean smelling, she thought, as wringing them dry, she went to put them out on the line, but it had begun to rain and she had to bring them back and leave them piled up in the sink. Taking up a scrubbing brush she decided to attack the paintwork. It was while she was on her knees scrubbing the wainscot that Christy appeared in his stocking-feet.

  ‘You’re taking off more paint than dirt,’ he said contemptuously. Looking down at her handiwork, Miss Lomas saw his words were true. She got to her feet. Her back was breaking. She ought as a start to have tackled an easier job. So when her eye fell on a small grease stain on the wallpaper above the sideboard, she felt to remove it would be a task so simple as to be almost pleasurable. Getting a hunk of bread she pulled out a lump of dough and vigorously rubbed at the red flock wallpaper.

  Perhaps the bread should have been stale? The stain seemed only to spread. Or perhaps s
he hadn’t rubbed hard enough? Leaning forward she was scrubbing with all her strength when to her stupefaction a long triangular strip of the paper gave way under her finger. First it crumpled like a concertina, and then opened out again to stream out from the wall like a pennant. Utterly disheartened now, Miss Lomas threw the bread on the floor which was already scattered with large crumbs. She crept back to the kitchen as to her lair.

  Christy’s dinner was still in the oven.

  He stayed away all that day too, and when night came and Miss Lomas crawled up the stairs and threw herself on her bed, too tired to undress, she slept so heavily she would not have heard him come back if he had pulled down the staircase.

  Next day she woke at cockcrow. Knowing now how hard the range would be to light, she got out of bed at once. The previous night she had shoved a few sticks of kindling into the oven to dry, but when she pulled them out, out too came Christy’s stale plate of dinner, which fell on the floor with a clatter and broke in two. Looking down at the pieces, she consoled herself that the plate would in any case have been impossible to clean, the blackened potatoes were stuck as fast to it as a pattern. Then as she stopped to pick up the pieces, she saw something else to upset her. Under the range there was an empty whiskey bottle.

  No wonder he didn’t eat if he spent the day drinking. Where did he get the money for it? Like herself, he had never been asked to give up change when he ran on an errand, but if he had hoarded anything it couldn’t be much. There might, of course, as Parr said, be people willing enough to advance him a few pounds on the strength of the fine farm that was in his name, mortgage or no mortgage.

  Just then outside in the yard Miss Lomas heard the same lowing of cattle that she had heard the morning before, but this time looking out, she saw eight or nine lean and scraggy heifers and a small flock of sheep running in the gate, with Christy running after them, as lively as a bee.

  So his consorting had been to some purpose? He must have codded his new cronies into giving him a loan on the strength of his expectations from Garretstown. Dear God – the next thing they knew he’d be sent to prison. But for the moment all that mattered was that he’d got hold of a bit of money. Momentarily, her heavy heart was lightened. She went to the door to call him for a cup of tea. After he had penned up the sheep and closed the heifers into a near field he came into the kitchen, and as he came in, he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small parcel of meat and threw it on the table. Then, as an afterthought, from the same pocket, he took two letters, bloodied by meat stains. He held one out to her. She saw at once it was from Parr. The other she assumed to be addressed to himself, probably from the same pen. Impulsively, she went over to the range and lifting the lid, she threw the letter, unopened, into the fire. Christy appeared to take no notice of her action. ‘Where’s the tea?’ he asked, taking down a cup from the dresser and reaching for the teapot.

  What was in his letter, she wondered? But there was no sound from him but the gulping down of the hot tea. Then, suddenly leaving down his cup, he went over to the range, and lifting the lid he dropped his own letter into the fire. Fast though the flames fastened on it, Miss Lomas saw that it too was unopened. ‘Are you mad?’ she screamed. ‘You don’t know what may be in the letter. It was from Parr, wasn’t it?’

  Christy leered at her. ‘If you didn’t care what he had to say, why should I?’ for the first time since George died, he looked her in the eyes, and Miss Lomas realised that her feelings towards him would never change. All that had happened was that where they had previously been divided by hatred, they were now bound by it.

  After Christy had swallowed the last of the tea, he went upstairs to his room. Miss Lomas thought he’d gone to bed because he had quite evidently been up all night, but in a minute he came down again with an old shot-gun that he kept for potting at rabbits.

  ‘If anyone wants to know who is the owner here,’ he said truculently, ‘he can look for his answer down the barrel of this gun,’ and going out into the haggard, he sat down on a heap of hay, facing towards the road, the gun across his knees.

  Christy sat on the heap of hay till noon.

  When he showed no sign of coming in for his dinner, Miss Lomas brought him out a plate of potatoes. ‘How long do you think you can keep up this game?’ she asked. He made no effort to answer her but she was beginning to realise that those who live together in hate learn to make a language of silence. And in that language nothing need go unsaid.

  Christy didn’t leave the yard till dusk, after which he made no attempt to do jobs that badly needed to be done. During the morning one or two neighbouring people passing on the road had looked in through the gate curiously but no one ventured to come in.

  The next day was wet, but the only difference this made to Christy was that he sat a bit further back in the haggard. That day too he sat there till dusk. That night he fumbled around the yard in the dark and in some sort of way got a few jobs done that could not be left any longer undone.

  Was he going to spend the rest of his life sitting on a heap of hay? Miss Lomas wondered.

  On the third day however Miss Lomas caught the sound of a trap on the road. Could she ever mistake the trot of that cob? Running to the back door, she called out to Christy. ‘It’s Parr,’ she warned.

  Christy too must have heard the cob but he did not get to his feet and to her astonishment the trap did not stop. Indeed, when it reached their gate, it flashed past faster and Mr Parr was looking straight in front of him between the ears of the cob as if Brook Farm was less than nothing to him.

  With a broad grin, Christy got to his feet and threw down the rifle. It had not been loaded.

  Reluctantly Miss Lomas had to express approval. ‘He knows what he’s up against now,’ she said timidly.

  Christy who had started to whistle, stopped short. ‘If I could get rid of you as early I’d be right,’ he said.

  It was just like him to take the good out of a thing. All day, his words rankled, and that afternoon for the first time in years, she went up to his room and distastefully eyeing its condition, she attempted to make his bed. The room was in a bad state. She ought not to have left it to the servant girls all those years. She filled two dustpans with cigarette butts alone, and there was such a smell she would have opened the window, only the sashes were stuck. All in all, she was nearly sick to her stomach before she got out of the room. It was no better than a pig-sty. But pig and all that he was, she felt he’d be grateful to her for her concern on his behalf. Not so. That night, when he went upstairs she heard him cursing and swearing. And next day his door was locked.

  *

  Casual callers had never been encouraged at Brook Farm. Now hardly a soul ever appeared. If someone did venture in the gate, even if it was only a neighbour, Miss Lomas always summoned Christy who in his turn always picked up the gun before he went to the door to find out what was wanted. In time, Miss Lomas found herself handing him the gun when she called him. And whenever he went out to the fields or even to the yard, he carried it under his arm like a cattle stick, although as often as not he carried it barrel backwards. But Miss Lomas had to admit the gun spoke loud, and what it said carried far. Soon no one at all came near the place, unless an unwary rate collector or warble-fly inspector, who’d scurry off down the drive a lot faster than he’d ambled up it. Christy got the name of being an ugly customer.

  One day however a stranger appeared while Christy was in town. Miss Lomas ran into the hall and dragged at the hall-door, but the door was swollen with damp and by the time she got it open, the stranger had already gone around the gable to try the back door. Miss Lomas was thrown into such a flurry by her own temerity, and also by a fear that Christy might return, she flew after the man like a hen flying out from under a farm cart. Without waiting to find out why the man had called, Miss Lomas began to talk to him herself.

  ‘If it’s Christy you’re
looking for,’ she cried without preamble, ‘you’re lucky it isn’t him that’s here. He’d run you off the place. He’s trying to best the Garrets, you see.’ Here she gave a loud scoffing laugh. ‘Him! that has no claim at all on the place. It’s me that has the claim,’ she cried hysterically. Then controlling herself, she leaned forward confidingly. ‘Don’t let that worry you though. You did right to come. A wrong impression was put abroad about me. Do you think I relish the way the place is going to rack and ruin? Me, who always put the interests of Brook Farm above all else. Wait a minute, sir, and I’ll get my coat and show you over the house.’ As she spoke she was looking anxiously around in case Christy might be coming back. ‘Wait another minute, sir,’ she said. ‘I have a better idea. If you’ll be so kind as to take a quick look around the yard, I’ll ready up the rooms a bit for your inspection.’

  Hurrying back into the house, she dragged a brush over the floor of the kitchen and rubbed ineffectively with her apron at the tea-stains on the table. Then she ran out again but there was no sign of the stranger. Instead Christy was standing in the middle of the yard, a sneer on his face.

  ‘Begod,’ he said, and he gave an ugly laugh, ‘you did my work better for me than I ever could do it. That poor devil thought it was into the hands of a lunatic he got. There’ll be no more intruders here at Brook Farm from now till the day one or other of us is boxed up for the clay.’

  Miss Lomas felt the truth of his words fasten upon her mind like a clamp, fixing her to her fate. Across the neighbouring fields, flattened by winter, the cemetery was plainer to be seen than usual. But even if she hung on till her end came, could she be sure where she’d be buried? Then a queer and terrifying thought came to her. If she died here alone in the house with him, would Christy bother to have her buried at all? She looked at him. He was staring at her malevolently. From romances she’d read as a girl, she’d known that eyes could speak love. She had never known they could more eloquently speak with malice. She shivered and went back in the house.