‘Thank you for bringing Robert back. I’m sorry I snapped at you as I did.’
‘Don’t be too severe on him.’
Because of the difficulty of turning the trap in the narrow lane, Betony drove straight on and so went homeward by Outlands and Blagg.
On her way down Craisie Lane, she stopped to speak to Fred Cox. Fred worked at Outlands Farm. He was an honest, intelligent man and was secretary of the local branch of his union. Betony knew him and his wife, for they had three children at the school and the eldest boy, Billy John, would almost certainly, next year, win a free place at the Grammar School in Chepsworth. Fred was on his way home from work, his dinner-satchel over his shoulder, a can of milk in his hand. He walked with a heavy, slouching, tread.
‘You look down-hearted,’ Betony said.
‘How many people, nowadays, ever look anything else?’ he asked.
‘Not many, if they work on the land.’
‘We’ve had an Irishman’s rise this week. That’s the second time in six months.’ He meant that his wages had been reduced. ‘We’re down to twenty-seven-and-six. I feel I could just about jump in the brook.’
‘What about the local Conciliation Committee? Surely they’d have something to say to that?’
‘My master, Mr Challoner, he don’t take no account of them. Nor don’t Mr Twill of Dunnings neither. Wages there is even worse. They’re down to twenty-five bob there.’
‘Oh, but that’s infamous!’ Betony said. ‘Can’t your union do anything?’
‘Not many chaps belong any more. They can’t afford four pence for the fee. There’s only two of us left at Outlands and our days is numbered, I daresay.’ Fred’s voice had tears in it. He was a man at the end of his tether. ‘What sort of winter’s it going to be? No bloody Wages Board any more! No bloody union left to fight! We’ll just about be starved off the land!’
Shrugging, he apologized. He made an effort to cast off his gloom. He spoke of the coming General Election.
‘We’ve got a man putting up for Chepsworth. A union man, one of our own. He’s worked on the land since he was a boy. Now if he could get in we’d be getting somewhere, ’cos he knows our problems inside out. I want him to hold a meeting here in Huntlip, but with no village hall nor nothing, he says it wouldn’t be worth his while. Folk won’t stand about out of doors, not in this weather, after dark. Nor they won’t trouble theirselves with travelling into Chepsworth neither.’
‘What about holding it in the school?’
‘Should we be able to, do you think?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Your board of managers, that’s why not! Tories, every one, I bet!’
‘Leave it to me,’ Betony said. ‘I’ll speak to the vicar as soon as I can. You’d better see your candidate and let me know what date you fix. You’ll need some posters putting up ‒’
‘I’ll see to that! There’s no problem there!’ Fred’s face was quite transformed. Hope had brought him back to life. ‘Christ, Miss Izzard, you’re a brick! Just supposing our man got in?’
‘That I can’t promise,’ Betony said. ‘I haven’t even got a vote.’ She would not be thirty for another two years.
‘You would have, by God, if I had my way! If women had the vote at twenty-one, we’d soon see a change of government, and Labour once in would be in for good.’
‘You seem very confident, anyway.’
‘If you can get us the use of the school.’
‘I shall certainly do my best,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in touch when I’ve got some news.’
She saluted him and drove away.
When she reached home and drove through the archway into the fold, her father and brother were at the pump, splashing their faces and hands in the trough. They had come from the workshop, covered in sawdust.
‘You’re late, my blossom,’ her father said. ‘Did you bring the paper like I asked?’
‘Yes, I’ve brought it,’ Betony said.
‘I hear there’s some Labour chap putting up. He’s got a nerve, putting up round here. Why, we’ve had a Liberal man for Chepsworth ever since never, practically. We’ve never voted for nobody else. Nobody else ent never stood.’
Dicky, going to see the pony, gave his sister a broad grin. ‘Dad’s not the only one who’s got it, you know. It’s spreading like wildfire everywhere.’
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.
‘Election fever!’ Dicky said.
In the kitchen, when Betony went in, her mother was taking a pie from the oven and Granna Kate was mashing the swedes.
‘Did you bring my buttons?’ Beth asked.
‘And my lozenges?’ Granna asked.
‘Yes, I brought them,’ Betony said. ‘And Great-grumpa’s nasal drops.’
‘Did you sell all your poppies?’ Beth asked.
‘All except a handful, yes.’
‘That there Earl Haig!’ Granna said. ‘Strikes me he’s doing a proper job. I reckon they ought to make him a Sir.’
Beth and her daughter exchanged a smile. Granna’s sayings were all of a piece. At seventy she was full of her years, and was always a little out of touch with what was going on around. Great-grumpa Tewke, on the other hand, although he was turned ninety-two, was just as astute as Granna was vague. He might be stiff in his joints these days; short of breath when he climbed the stairs; but not much escaped his memory. He came into the kitchen now as Dicky came in at the other door.
‘Did you finish them trestles for Edgar Mapp?’
‘Yes, I finished them,’ Dicky said.
‘Did you take them down to him?’
‘I took them down at ten o’clock.’
Dicky was rather pleased with himself. He did not always emerge so well from the old man’s catechisms. Betony took the opportunity, now that Great-grumpa Tewke was there, of mentioning a troublesome fault in the trap.
‘That offside tyre is still loose. One of the rivets is nearly out. The tyre was rattling all the way home.’ Great-grumpa’s head came round at once.
‘Ent you fixed that rivet yet? You get it done this afternoon! If need be, take it down to the forge, and get Will Pentland to deal with it.’
Dicky, swearing under his breath, took his place at the table, next to Betony.
‘There goes my afternoon off!’ he said. ‘Did you have to mention that damned tyre?’
‘I wanted it done,’ Betony said. ‘I’ll be needing the trap in the next few days.’
The tyre had been loose for a week or more; Dicky and her father would let things slide; any old day would do for them; it was Great-grumpa Tewke who got things done. Although ‘retired’ from the carpenter’s business, he always knew what was going on, in the workshop and in the house, and a word from him would still be obeyed.
The family sat down to their meal. Beth began to cut the pie. Jesse was still immersed in his paper. He put it away reluctantly and took his place at the foot of the table.
‘There’s all sorts of chaps putting up this time. Liberal, Conservative, Labour, the lot. Poor Mr Crown will have to fight. I reckon that’s hard on a man of his age, after being our Member all these years.’
‘He’ll get in just the same, you mark my words,’ said Great-grumpa Tewke.
‘How do you know that?’ Betony asked.
‘The Liberals have always held Chepsworth, that’s why, and that ent a town to change its coat.’
Great-grumpa Tewke voted Liberal, as every right-minded person did, and the outcome to him was therefore unquestionable.
‘I’m afraid not, Miss Izzard,’ Mr Netherton said, when Betony called at the vicarage. ‘The Labour candidate? Oh dear me no! Such a thing would never do.’
‘What about the other candidates? Will they be allowed to use the school?’
‘The matter hasn’t arisen,’ he said. ‘No one’s approached me on that score.’
‘Supposing they do? How will you answer them?’ Betony asked.
‘The onl
y promise I can make is to raise the matter with the managers and see how they react to it. But I’m quite certain they will refuse.’
‘If they disagree with Labour principles, they can always come to the meeting themselves, to voice any criticisms they have.’
‘Well, speaking for myself, as a Liberal ‒’
‘You would naturally want to hear both sides. Will you come to the meeting if it is held?’
‘No, I think not,’ Mr Netherton said. ‘As vicar of the parish, you know, I’m afraid my attendance at such a meeting might influence my parishioners.’
Secretly Betony doubted it. Mr Netherton had been vicar of Huntlip for two and a half years and the only effect he had had on his parishioners was to cause them intense irritation. In the pulpit he had great eloquence, but out in the parish he was weak. He tried too hard to please all men and was therefore destined to please almost none.
‘If you were to forbid a Labour meeting in the school, however, you might be influencing them in the other direction.’
‘I neither forbid nor accede, Miss Izzard. The decision is not just mine alone.’
‘But you could influence the board.’
‘I’m not sure that I want to do that.’
‘Mr Netherton,’ Betony said. ‘When the General Election is held, the school will be used as a polling station. If people can go there to vote for the Labour candidate, surely they can go there to hear him speak beforehand?’
‘I will raise the matter with the managers. That is as far as I will go.’
Betony knew he was stalling her. He would leave the matter until it was too late. She therefore went to see Fred Cox and together they planned their course of action. Four days later the posters arrived. She had them put up throughout the village. The vicar met her after school.
‘Really, Miss Izzard, I must protest! I did not consent to this meeting of yours.’
‘Have you seen the managers?’
‘No, not yet, I must admit.’
‘Would it be better if I saw them myself?’
‘You’ve left it rather late, haven’t you, seeing these posters are everywhere?’
‘It would certainly be very awkward if the meeting had to be cancelled now. People would say ‒ and there would be some truth in it ‒ that a man had been denied freedom of speech.’
Mr Netherton was annoyed.
‘You’ve deliberately forced me into this position, Miss Izzard, and it’s no good looking to me for support. It seems I’m obliged to yield to you, but let me say categorically, that I don’t for one moment approve of it, and when the managers tackle me ‒ as they surely will ‒ I will make my position clear to them. Furthermore, I hold you personally responsible for the conduct of the meeting in the school, and everything connected with it.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Betony said.
Within a few days, many more posters had appeared. The day of the meeting was announced on them as Friday November the twenty-fourth. Tea and refreshments would be served.
One of the posters was nailed to a tree in Rayner’s Lane. Chris, who was taking two horses to be shod, stopped in the rain to read what it said, and Gerald Challoner, out shooting, came across the field to him.
‘I suppose you’ll be going?’ he said with a grin.
‘What, to hear some socialist spouting rot?’
‘Might be fun in it,’ Gerald said.
‘Are you thinking of going, then?’
‘There’s two or three of us going, my boy. We’ve got some ideas for making the meeting go with a swing. Coming with us or are you too young?’
‘Just try and keep me out, that’s all!’
When Chris had gone, leading the horses down the lane, Gerald reached for the rain-soaked poster and pulled it from its nail. He screwed it up into a ball and thrust it into the nearest ditch. It was the third he had dealt with that day.
Chapter Seven
The night of the meeting was cold and wet. When Chris arrived at The Black Ram, up on the edge of Huntlip Common, Gerald was there waiting for him, with Jeff Twill of Dunnings, Jackie Franklin of Lucketts End, and David Mapp of Letts. They drank outside, keeping away from the lighted windows, for all of them were under age and their drinks were passed out to them by the maid. When their glasses were empty, Gerald took a look at his watch.
‘Eight o’clock! Let’s go!’ he said, and the five of them set off down the hill, boots pounding the rough stony road.
Chris was among his equals tonight. The five of them, as they strode together, were united by a common bond. They were all farmers’ sons, and each boy’s father owned his farm. They were little lords of the land, and the knowledge gave them a fine swagger. Laughing and joking, they descended on the village school, where lights shone in the high windows, and where the doors stood fastened back, open to welcome all who came.
Inside the schoolroom, the panelled partition had been removed, and so had all the children’s desks. Betony, helped by Fred Cox, had carried everything out to the playground and covered the pile with a canvas sheet. Wooden benches had been brought in, mostly from the workshop at Cobbs, and a table and chairs had been set in front for the speaker and his supporters. On the wall above hung a printed poster: Vote for Bob Treadwell: Vote for Action and Employment. Of the school furniture, only the cupboards and piano remained, and these had been pushed into a corner. Because the night was wet and cold, Betony had kept the stoves alight, and beside each stove stood a scuttle of coals. None of Betony’s family were there. Dicky had come, bringing the benches, and had helped to carry them into the school. After that he had gone away.
‘Politics is nothing to me. You can have my vote for half-a-crown!’
By half-past-seven, when the candidate arrived, there were fifteen people gathered in the schoolroom, mostly labourers from the farms around. By eight o’clock, when the meeting was timed to begin, a few younger labourers were drifting in, having come, it was plain, from The Rose and Crown. Three of these were dressed in their best and wore Tory blue favours in their coats. Others wore the Liberal yellow and one or two the Labour red.
Betony, standing inside the door, surveyed the assembly. She knew all the people there by sight, and could put names to most of them, especially those who had children at school. There were three men from Holland Farm, two from Outlands, and two from Letts. Fred Cox had brought his wife, and there were three other women there.
‘Not much of a turn-out,’ Fred remarked. ‘Not for a village the size of Huntlip. Most of these youngsters ent got a vote and as for the rest ‒ Bob’ll be preaching to the converted.’
‘Let’s wait a few minutes,’ Betony said. ‘Perhaps there’ll be some late-comers.’
But the only late-comers were the five fresh-faced young farmers’ sons, led by Gerald Challoner, who arrived just as the doors were closed and hammered loudly for admittance. They swaggered in, these corduroy lordlings so full of themselves, and stood for a moment glancing about, eyes narrowed against the light. Then they shouldered their way to the front and slumped together on the foremost bench. They were well aware of the pause in the hum of talk around, and the many eyes that were turned their way, and they glanced at each other, smirking and winking, pleased with the stir their arrival had caused.
‘Any of your lot here, Chris?’ Gerald asked in an undertone. ‘There’s two of ours, needless to say, but I knew they’d be here, they’re union mad.’
Chris looked over his shoulder and counted three of his father’s men. Only two of them sat together: Reg Starling and Billy Rye; the other man was Morton George and he sat with Tommy Long of Letts.
‘There are three of ours,’ Chris said. ‘But only one is a union man. The other two are all right.’
‘They could still vote Labour, couldn’t they?’
‘Yes, well, I suppose they could.’
At twenty-past-eight the meeting began. Fred Cox, in the chair, introduced the candidate, Bob Treadwell, who arose to the sound of ragged applause.
> ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he began, and a few young labourers booed at him. He bore it all with a friendly grin and when it was over he began again. ‘Comrades, I’ll say, if you prefer it ‒’
‘Get away!’ said a voice from the back. ‘Get back to Moscow where you belong!’
‘Friends, then!’ the candidate said.
‘We’ll have to think about that!’ said the voice. ‘We’ll have to take a vote on it!’
But the candidate made his start at last and spoke for a while without interruption. He had a good voice and a sense of humour and he made his audience of farm-workers laugh by explaining the blue-black mark on his cheek.
‘Not, as you might think, a heckler throwing a rotten egg, but a cow I was milking early this morning who was rather careless with her tail!’
Soon, however, he became serious, talking of conditions on the land and unemployment in particular. Something would have to be done, he said, and a Labour government, once elected, would soon show that they knew the answers to the problems.
‘Don’t we all!’ Gerald said, in a tone of heavy sarcasm.
The candidate merely carried on.
‘The disgraceful treatment by employers of men, and most especially on the land, where conditions are worsening all the time.’
‘Who pays their wages?’ Gerald asked.
‘Wages?’ the candidate replied. ‘Down to thirty shillings a week and in some cases even less! Does the young gentleman call that a wage?’
‘Where would the labourers be without it? You tell us that!’ Gerald exclaimed.
‘Wages in 1919 were forty-six shillings a week.’
‘Prices were higher then,’ Gerald said. ‘Now where are they? Down the drain!’
‘I know what problems the farmer has to face.’
‘The labour problem for a start!’
‘The flaming union!’ shouted Jeff Twill. ‘That’s one of his problems, to name but a few!’
‘If the young gentlemen will hear me out.’
‘Yes, let him speak!’ said Billy Rye’s wife. ‘He’s the one we came to hear, not you half-grown bits of lads!’
The Land Endures (The Apple Tree Saga Book 4) Page 13