Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5)

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘You just swept in front of here?’

  ‘Yes, this minute. Why, ent it clean?’

  ‘Then you must’ve found something on the floor.’

  ‘What sort of something? Nuts and bolts?’

  ‘You’d know what it was if you’d picked it up.’

  ‘I’ve picked up nothing,’ Cressy said.

  ‘Ah, I wonder!’ Fleming said. He drew on his cigarette again and let the smoke curl out of his nose. He called across to Charlie and Jerry. ‘I want a word with you two!’

  ‘Sounds ominous,’ Charlie said. He turned, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘There was a quid on the floor here just now. I’d like to know where it’s bloody well gone.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Charlie said, ‘you’ve just lit your fag with it.’

  Fleming’s face became brick-red. He picked up the spill and undid its folds. The pound note was two thirds burnt. He turned to Charlie with a snarl.

  ‘You’ve gone too far with me this time! You’re getting your cards, you cheeky sod!’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Jerry exclaimed. ‘You can’t sack Charlie just like that! Dammit, Frank, can’t you take a joke?’

  ‘It’s all right, Jerry,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m not worried. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not worried, not you!’ Fleming said. ‘There’s always the farm, isn’t there?’ He came close to where Charlie stood and thrust out his jaw aggressively. ‘That’s been your trouble all along! You think ’cos you’ve got that farm of yours you can damn well do as you like with me! But you’re mistaken, I’ll soon show you that!’

  ‘You’ve already shown me,’ Charlie said. ‘You’ve given me notice. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Who said anything about notice? You can take your cards and leave right now!’

  Charlie, though angry, managed a shrug.

  ‘So long as you pay me for this week’s work ‒’

  ‘I’ll pay you all right!’ Fleming said, ‘I’ll pay you off and give you your cards and then you can bloody well sling your hook!’

  In his rage, as he turned away, he collided with George Cressy.

  ‘Look here,’ said George, blocking the way, ‘if you’re sacking Charlie, you’ll have to sack me!’

  ‘Right! It’s a bargain!’ Fleming said. ‘You can leave together! Two birds with one stone!’

  ‘George didn’t mean that,’ Charlie said. ‘You’ve no call to take it out on him.’

  ‘I do mean it, Charlie,’ George said. He pushed his broom into Fleming’s hands. ‘There you are! It’s all yours! You can sweep your own floors from now on!’

  ‘Get out of my way!’ Fleming said. He flung the broom to one side.

  He walked across the repair-shop and went into the glass cubicle that served him as office. The three men stood in a group together, watching him rummaging though his desk. ‘God, what a turn-up!’ Jerry said. ‘How’re you two going to get jobs? There’s over a thousand unemployed, just in Mingleton alone, and it’s getting worse all the time.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Charlie said. ‘I suppose you’re trying to cheer us up?’

  Fleming now came out of his office and thrust Charlie’s employment card into his hand. Charlie made sure that it was stamped and counted the money he found inside. ‘Two-pound-fifteen? What’s the idea?’

  ‘I’ve docked you a pound for the one that got burnt.’ Fleming’s revenge was sweet to him and his pale, bright gaze was still for once, dwelling on Charlie’s angry face. ‘You don’t get the better of me, old son! You should’ve known better than try it on!’

  He turned towards George Cressy and thrust a pound note into his hand. Charlie again put in a word.

  ‘Won’t you change your mind about George?’

  ‘Just to please you? Will I hell! You can get out, the pair of you, and never mind the fond farewells!’

  Charlie reached for his jacket and cap and put them on. He slung his dinner-bag over his shoulder and moved to the door. George Cressy followed him and Jerry went with them to see them off.

  ‘So long, Jerry. Watch out for yourself. There’s always the odd thunderbolt, even in the wintertime.’

  ‘Ah, I know, and when it falls ‒’

  ‘Yes, what then?’

  ‘‒ I’ll see you in the dole-queue!’

  Outside, in the rain, Charlie drew up his jacket collar. He looked at George Cressy’s red-scarred face.

  ‘You shouldn’t have left because of me. It’s like Jerry said, jobs are scarce.’

  ‘You don’t catch me stopping on in a place where a mate of mine gets sacked like that.’

  ‘Well, it’s too late for the Labour Exchange and too early for opening time, so I reckon we may as well go home. If I hear of a job that’d suit you, I’ll look you up at the Hit and Miss.’

  ‘I’ll do the same for you,’ George said.

  When Charlie got home, just after five, Linn and Jack were in the kitchen.

  ‘You’re home early for a change.’

  ‘I’ve lost my job, that’s why,’ he said. He watched the smile fade from Linn’s face. ‘Fleming and me, we had a row. It’s been in the air for quite a time. Anyway, he’s paid me off. Me and George Cressy, the two of us.’ Charlie put his money on the table, as he always did on Friday nights. ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit short this week.’ He told her about the burnt pound note.

  ‘Why did you play that trick on him? You should’ve known he’d hate you for that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlie said, ‘I should’ve known.’ He went to hang up his jacket and cap. ‘I suppose you’ll say I asked for it.’

  ‘You do seem to go out of your way to ask for trouble sometimes.’

  ‘It was bound to happen in the end. Fleming’s had it in for me. I’ve felt it coming these two months or more.’

  ‘Then you should have had more sense than to go provoking him like that. How will it be when you go for a job and they ask for a reference from Frank Fleming?’

  ‘I admit I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘There are queues every day at the Labour Exchange. I see them whenever I go into town.’

  ‘They’re not skilled mechanics, I don’t suppose.’

  ‘So you think you’ll get a job all right?’

  ‘I don’t know until I’ve tried. I shall have to hope for the best.’

  But although he spoke cheerfully, Charlie in fact was sick at heart. He too had seen the queues outside the door of the Labour Exchange; the men and young lads in the Mingleton streets, idling away their empty days; the others who tramped the country roads, begging coppers wherever they could, as they went from one workhouse to the next. It seemed he had made a mess of things; he had joined the ranks of the unemployed; the shabby loiterers; those without hope. And yet, in spite of everything, when he thought of Frank Fleming and the garage, he had no regrets: only a sense of deliverance, as though he had put down a heavy burden and was now free to do as he pleased.

  He wished he could talk to Linn about this and make her understand how he felt, but he could see by her worried frown and the way she avoided looking at him that she would be out of sympathy with anything he had to say.

  With Jack, however, it was different. He looked at it from a man’s point of view. He understood and sympathised.

  ‘You can’t work for a man like Fleming, who’s always out to trip you up. I reckon you’re better out of it.’

  ‘At least he could’ve stayed,’ Linn said, ‘until he’d got another job.’

  ‘How could I stay when I’d got the sack?’

  ‘That was something you brought on yourself.’

  When Robert came in and heard the news, he had a crumb of comfort to offer.

  ‘If Fleming won’t give you a reference, there’s one man who will and that’s Mr Madge. He’s always saying what a first-class mechanic you are. He’d give you a reference like a shot.’

  ‘What good will that do?’ Linn demanded. ‘He
was never Charlie’s boss.’

  ‘It cheers me up all the same,’ Charlie said, ‘to know there’s someone who thinks well of me.’

  ‘It seems to me you’re cheerful enough,’ Linn said in a dry tone. ‘No one would think, to look at you, that you’d just been thrown out of work.’

  ‘Well, there’s no point in moping, is there? I daresay something will come along.’

  No, he could not explain to Linn that his work at the garage, under Fleming, had been a kind of enslavement to him and that now he felt he had been released. He lay beside her in bed that night and knew she would never understand.

  ‘Is the Labour Exchange open on Saturday?’

  ‘Yes, until twelve o’clock, I think.’

  ‘You’ll be able to go first thing, then,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, that’s right, first thing,’ he agreed.

  At ten o’clock the next morning, however, Charlie had still not left the farm. Linn looked out of the kitchen window and saw him in the three acre strip, cutting a barrowload of kale for the pigs. She went out and spoke to him.

  ‘It’s after ten, did you know?’

  ‘Yes, I heard the church clock strike.’

  ‘You said you were going into town.’

  ‘I reckon maybe I’ve changed my mind.’

  The sharp blade of the fagging-hook went cutting through the frosty kale and Charlie stood upright, straightening his back. He dropped the cut kale into the barrow and wiped his wet hand on his overalls.

  ‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ he said, ‘and I reckon it’s better to wait a bit.’ He laid his fagging-hook in the barrow and stood lighting a cigarette. ‘There’s no end of jobs to be done on the farm and it seems to me a good idea if I get a few of them done now before I go looking for work elsewhere.’

  He pointed towards the end of the barn, where the lean-to shed had collapsed in the gales.

  ‘I could rebuild that shed for a start. I could see about mending the barn roof and laying that concrete in the byre. Then there’s the pig-huts in need of repair and the benches you need putting up in your dairy ‒’

  ‘I know what needs doing,’ Linn said, ‘but how long is it all going to take?’

  ‘Two or three weeks. A month. It depends.’

  ‘Think of the wages you’ll lose in that time.’

  ‘Think of the money I shall save by getting everything ship-shape here.’

  ‘Have you talked about it to Dad?’

  ‘No, I thought I’d speak to you first.’

  ‘Why, will you take notice of what I say?’

  ‘Well,’ Charlie said. He smiled at her. ‘I should like to know what you think.’

  ‘I think you should go and look for a job.’

  ‘So I shall! No question of that! But there’s so many things wanting doing here that it seems to me only common sense ‒’

  ‘If you hang about for two or three weeks, you might miss all sorts of jobs elsewhere. I certainly see no sense in that.’

  ‘Oh, I shall find a job all right. You’ve got to have faith in my good luck.’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t listen to me. You’ll please yourself. You men always do.’

  ‘I hoped I was going to please you too.’

  Once again he essayed a smile, but Linn’s glance was satirical, and after a moment she turned away. When she got to the gate, however, she paused and stood looking back at him.

  ‘Seeing you’re so keen to please ‒’

  ‘Yes? What?’

  ‘‒ Perhaps you’d milk the goats for me.’

  Charlie threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘I’d milk the billy if you were to ask!’

  He took hold of the wheelbarrow and began wheeling it up the field. He walked with just a hint of a swing and, going round to the pig-pen, even hummed a tune to himself. The feeling of freedom was growing on him. He felt immense, like a man reborn.

  He lost no time in carrying out his plans, and soon a lorry came to the farm, delivering umber and galvanized iron, bricks and tiles and sand and cement. First he repaired the barn roof and then he began rebuilding the shed.

  One morning when Linn, on her way to the dairy, stopped to watch him laying bricks, he spoke to her about George Cressy.

  ‘I wondered if you could give him some work. There are plenty of jobs he could do around here.’

  ‘No,’ Linn said, ‘he’s dangerous.’

  ‘There’s no harm in George if he’s treated right.’

  ‘Didn’t he burn his face?’ she said. ‘Didn’t he get in a fight once and hit a man with a beer-bottle?’

  ‘George wouldn’t do half those things if only people would leave him alone.’

  ‘That’s what I mean to do ‒ leave him alone. I’m certainly not having him here.’

  ‘He lost his job through me,’ Charlie said, but, seeing that Linn remained unmoved: ‘No, well, maybe you’re right. It was just a passing idea.’

  The following Friday, after work, Charlie went down to the Hit and Miss to buy a packet of cigarettes. George Cressy was at the bar and was buying drinks for all his friends.

  ‘I’ve got a job on the railway,’ he said. ‘I’m a ganger, I work on the line. It’s a full-time job and I get good pay ‒ nearly four pounds with overtime. Better than sweeping the garage, eh?’

  ‘Seems you’ve done pretty well for yourself.’

  ‘The only thing is, I don’t like my boss. I’ll take a hammer one of these days and lay him out in front of a train.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ Charlie said.

  George merely grinned at him.

  ‘Come and have a drink,’ he said.

  Charlie, however, shook his head. He had no money to spend on drinks. His last few coppers had just gone on a packet of twenty cigarettes.

  ‘No, thanks, George. Not tonight.’

  ‘Some other time, then?’

  ‘Ah, that’s right.’

  The shed was rebuilt and the pig-huts repaired; a new concrete floor was laid in the byre; and twenty loads of hardcore, fetched from the Council rubbish-heap, were tipped on to the farm-track to fill up the ruts and pot-holes. But this was only a beginning; there were many more things he wanted to do; and one of his most cherished ambitions was to drain the miry ten acre field, so badly choked with reeds and rushes, and bring it into cultivation.

  ‘But surely that would take years?’

  ‘All the more reason for starting now.’

  ‘We’ve managed without that field so far. I think we’re wiser to leave it alone. Cleaning the spring is more urgent than that.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Charlie said, ‘and getting the water piped down to your dairy.’

  He was never at a loss for things to do. He kept himself busy from dawn to dusk. And the marvellous part of it all was that he could come and go as he pleased. He had not known such freedom for twenty years; not since his youth on his father’s farm; and every single day that dawned was like a splendid holiday, even though he worked so hard.

  ‘I see you’ve got Charlie milking your goats,’ Jack remarked to Linn one day. ‘Seems that chap’ll do anything to please you.’

  ‘Only so long as he’s pleasing himself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I never asked him to stop at home and do all these jobs about the farm.’

  ‘You’ll benefit from it all the same.’

  ‘Yes, I daresay,’ Linn said.

  Jack looked at her with a frown.

  ‘It ent all fun and games for him, working without any wages, you know. He never comes to the pub these nights, nor he ent smoked for a day or two. He won’t let me treat him. Oh, no, not him! He’s earning no money so he goes without.’

  ‘And whose fault is that? Not mine!’ Linn said. ‘Charlie’s doing what he wants to do.’

  ‘That don’t make it any less worthwhile.’

  On the following Friday evening Linn, as usual, paid her father his weekly wage and he prepared to go
to the pub. He looked at Charlie, who sat by the fire, hidden behind the Daily Express.

  ‘What about coming down with me? I can afford to stand you a pint.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve got a few jobs to do.’

  ‘All right, please yourself, you’re an obstinate beggar,’ Jack said.

  The door closed and he was gone. Linn and Charlie were left alone. Charlie got up out of his chair and put his paper under the cushion.

  ‘I reckon I’ll get that washtub in that you said needed seeing to.’

  ‘Never mind the washtub,’ Linn said. ‘You’ve done quite enough for one day.’

  She took a pound note from her cashbox and pushed it across the table to him. Charlie looked at her in surprise.

  ‘What’s the idea?’ he said with a laugh. ‘I don’t want paying for what I’ve done.’

  ‘Why not? You work hard enough. It’s only fair that you should be paid.’

  ‘Yes, but look here! It’s hardly right. I chose to stop and work at home. You were against it. You said so straight.’

  ‘It’s only for a little while, until you get a proper job.’

  ‘Even so,’ Charlie said. He eyed the money uncertainly.

  ‘Go on, take it, it’s yours,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to have something in your pocket to go for a drink on a Friday night. Go after Dad and catch him up. You know he likes your company.’

  ‘Was it Jack who put you up to this?’

  ‘I don’t know why you should think that. I do have some ideas of my own.’

  ‘Right, if you’re sure, I’ll take it, then.’ He picked up the note and pocketed it. He went to the door for his jacket and cap. ‘I suppose, now I think about it, the farm can stand it well enough? It won’t go broke, anyway, just for the sake of a pound, eh?’

  Linn made no answer to this, but looked at him over her spectacles.

  ‘I’ll tell you what!’ Charlie said. ‘As soon as I’m in a proper job I’ll pay you back what you’ve given me!’

  ‘Now you’re just being silly,’ she said.

  Charlie grinned and went out after Jack.

  He had never been a great drinking man, but he liked his pint of beer now and then, and he liked the company at the pub. He and Jack would sit with Sam Trigg in the snuggery at the Hit and Miss and their pints would probably last them an hour.