The Land Endures (The Apple Tree Saga Book 4)

by Mary E. Pearce

  And the one person who had started it all was a young woman, apparently alone, dressed in a bottle-green coat with a high collar and a pillbox hat trimmed with fur. Being only of medium height and surrounded mostly by men, she had climbed onto the edge of a horse-trough, and was thus head and shoulders above the crowd, looking straight across at the Member for Chepsworth. Her questions rang out across the town square and Mr Crown had the greatest difficulty in following the speech he had prepared. It was pretty much the same speech he had made in previous election campaigns. His simple beliefs were embodied in it. It had always been heard with respect until now.

  ‘Would the fair-haired young lady in dark green ‒ who is wearing a very entertaining hat ‒ be good enough to repeat her question?’

  And the young lady, quite unmoved by the compliment, was only too willing to oblige. The questions came, thick and fast, and Mr Crown was kept busy. Would he say that the coalition government, during its term of office, had done well by the unemployed? Was he reasonably well satisfied with the sight of ex-servicemen begging their bread in the town’s gutters? And could he promise, if returned to his seat again, that these atrocious conditions would be maintained and that perhaps a new and even worse record might be achieved?

  Stephen stood at the back of the crowd, having come from some business in Millichip Street. James Crown was known to him: he owned an estate at Newton Childe and farmed six hundred acres of it himself; Stephen had sometimes bought sheep from him. Crown was a good enough man in his way; he scarcely deserved his fate here today; and Stephen, smiling to himself, braced his back against the wind and settled down to watch and listen. Betony Izzard was now asking questions about conditions on the land.

  ‘Why is there no national insurance for farm workers?’

  ‘Because they don’t need it,’ the Member said. ‘There is plenty of work on the land.’

  ‘Take us to it!’ a man shouted, and a few others took up the cry.

  ‘You are a landowner, Mr Crown,’ Betony said in her clear-ringing voice. ‘Will you give these men a job?’

  ‘I already employ more than twenty men.’

  ‘How much do you pay them?’ Betony asked.

  ‘They don’t complain!’ the Member said.

  ‘It seems to me you’re evading the question. What are the wages on your farm?’

  ‘I think we’re getting away from the point ‒’

  ‘Why don’t you answer?’ Betony asked. ‘Is it because the wages you pay your men would not satisfy the Conciliation Committee?’

  There was a ripple in the crowd, and a dozen voices began to chant, ‘Answer her! Answer her! Answer, answer, answer her!’ The Member suddenly became aware of the cold; he hunched his shoulders and buttoned up his coat; and at that moment the rain came down, cold and white and saturating, dispersing the crowd to the shelter of doorways, here and there about the square.

  Stephen, as the crowd thinned, ran across to the Corn Exchange and sheltered under its portico, with James Crown and his canvassers.

  ‘Take courage, man!’ he said. ‘The elements are on your side!’

  Betony Izzard, he could see, was sharing an elderly man’s umbrella, between two buttresses of St Winifred’s church.

  ‘That young woman!’ Crown exclaimed. ‘I wish the rain would drive her off home!’

  ‘Has she got you rattled?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘It’s all very well for you to jeer. I’ve never had much of this before. It’s always been a clean, straightforward affair, and I’ve always been allowed to say my piece.’

  ‘I can see she’s been giving you a rough ride.’

  ‘Young woman like that! You’d think she had something better to do. If I had a daughter as troublesome as that, I’d keep her at home under lock and key!’

  ‘I happen to be acquainted with her. I’ll see if I can take her off your hands.’

  ‘Do that,’ Crown said, ‘and I’ll send you a couple of brace of pheasants.’

  ‘Right, it’s a bargain,’ Stephen agreed.

  As the shower eased, and people emerged again into the square, Stephen went across to St Winifred’s and met Betony coming away.

  ‘Miss Izzard!’ he said, raising his cap. ‘This is a very pleasant surprise.’

  ‘Is it?’ she said, sceptically.

  ‘For me it is, anyway. Will you come and have coffee with me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Wayman, I don’t think I can. There are certain things I want to do.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re still out of charity with me. We exchanged some sharp words the last time we met. But our argument was cut short and I’ll be glad of the chance to pick up the threads.’

  He could see the reluctance in her face. She was glancing across the town square to where James Crown, on the Corn Exchange steps, had a crowd in front of him again.

  ‘I would also be glad of the chance to talk about Emma.’

  ‘What about her?’ Betony asked.

  ‘Come and have coffee,’ he said again, and this time she agreed.

  ‘The thing about places like this,’ he said, looking around the tiny teashop, ‘is that they are citadels of femininity and men are only allowed in on sufferance.’

  ‘Women will not be satisfied, however, until they have stormed and taken a few of the citadels guarded so jealously by men.’

  ‘You are a socialist, Miss Izzard?’

  ‘I don’t have a vote yet, Mr Wayman, so it hardly matters what I am. But in fact I haven’t made up my mind.’

  ‘You held a socialist meeting in your school.’

  ‘It was a meeting of people,’ she said. ‘Anyone was welcome ‒ even farmers.’

  Stephen smiled.

  ‘It’s a great pity I didn’t come. But I take little interest in politics.’

  ‘You vote, however, I daresay.’

  ‘Surely you don’t grudge me that?’

  ‘You grudge it to me,’ Betony said.

  ‘I do?’ he said, much astonished. ‘It’s hardly my doing that women can’t vote till the age of thirty.’

  But the truth was, as he had to admit, that his thoughts on the subject had never been clarified, even to himself. It amused him to think of women having the vote; he couldn’t understand why they wanted it, since men took care of things like that; but in fact he had more respect for women than many men did who were loud in support of equality. His own attitude to women was such that he didn’t see why they should want more freedom than he already extended to them. He tried to explain this to Betony.

  ‘My household is ruled by women,’ he said. ‘By my cousin, Miss Skeine, on the one hand, and by Mrs Bessemer on the other. But I don’t storm their citadels. I merely take refuge in the barn.’

  Betony smiled. She was used to this kind of chaffing patronage. But she would not make the mistake, as some women did, of pursuing the subject in seriousness merely that men might be amused.

  ‘Most women don’t want to rule their menfolk, Mr Wayman. They ask only to rule themselves.’

  ‘I’m glad you agreed to have coffee with me. It shows you bear me no grudge, after all, for my son’s behaviour at the meeting last week.’

  ‘I have no reason to bear you or your son a grudge. I am not to lose my post after all. But, as one of the managers, you must already know that.’

  ‘As one of the managers, and the father of a child at the school, I am extremely glad to hear it.’

  He did not mention his own part in influencing the rest of the board. In fact it hardly crossed his mind. He was watching her as she poured the coffee.

  ‘I’ve been thinking over what you said about Emma being neglected,’ he said. ‘I’ve got three other children, as you know, and Emma is very much their pet. She gets her fair share of spoiling, I assure you, but she’s a lot younger than the others and she does get left out of their games, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s why she wanders off alone.’

  ‘I asked her about the note you mentioned and she said she l
ost it on the way home.’ He helped himself to sugar and stirred it round in his coffee. ‘I don’t think she wanted any of her family to come to the Parents’ Day. I get the feeling that she wants to keep her new school all to herself. Don’t ask me why. It’s a mystery to me. You probably understand her better than I do.’

  ‘Emma is not yet in my class, but I keep an eye on her, of course, and Miss Vernon talks to me about her. Emma, like all children, wants attention, but sometimes, when she’s got it, she retires into herself.’

  Betony drank the last of her coffee and set down her cup. ‘I feel I should withdraw that charge of neglect, Mr Wayman. It was made somewhat hastily and I apologize.’

  ‘You spoke as you found,’ Stephen said. ‘I hope you will always do that.’

  There was a pause, and he drank his coffee. Betony refilled his cup and when he took it from her she noticed for the first time that the fingers and thumb of his right hand were twisted and scarred.

  ‘I was hit by shrapnel,’ he explained. ‘But the hand still works reasonably well. There aren’t many jobs I can’t do on the farm. It’s a bit stiff in winter, unfortunately, and then the cows don’t like me milking them. The milk comes out crooked, my cowman says.’

  ‘Where were you, in the war?’

  ‘Flanders, first, and then the Somme. Sezerincourt and Mametz Wood. I was gassed a bit at St Helene. It left me with a husky voice.’

  Betony nodded. She had heard that huskiness in men’s voices before; had seen many scars like those that puckered Stephen’s hand;, and had seen that tiredness which even now, six years afterwards, was like a shadow at the back of his eyes. And suddenly she remembered, with a cold sense of shock, that this was the man whose wife had died in a tragic accident, less than half a mile from home.

  ‘How long were you out at the front?’

  ‘Only ten months in all. But ‒ I was glad not to have to go back again.’

  Across the small table, with its coffee cups and its plate of biscuits, they looked at each other and were silent a while. He rather liked her straight, calm gaze, but something was nagging at the back of his mind.

  There was a story he had heard, of her jilting her fiancé on the wedding day. How could a woman do such a thing? There must be some hardness in her, he thought, although it was not to be seen in her face. And, looking at her, he wondered about her, wishing he could read her mind.

  Outside the teashop, when they left, they met the Member, James Crown, who, with a group of laughing attendants, was just coming in in quest of lunch. He raised his hat with exaggerated politeness to Betony and gave Stephen a broad wink.

  ‘Much obliged to you, Wayman, I’m sure. I’ll do the same for you some day. Though half an hour in such pleasant company was no great sacrifice, I don’t suppose?’

  ‘Quite the reverse,’ Stephen agreed.

  The rain had died out altogether now. A pale, unwarm sun was struggling forth. He walked with Betony to The Plough, where she had left the pony and trap.

  ‘What did Mr Crown mean?’

  ‘He was thanking me,’ Stephen said, ‘for having taken you off his hands while he said his piece to the crowd in the square;’

  Betony faced him.

  ‘Was that your object in asking me?’

  ‘Not exactly. It was a joke.’

  ‘You are easily amused, Mr Wayman.’

  ‘Come, now, Miss Izzard! You’re surely not hipped?’

  ‘Nobody likes having their time wasted.’

  ‘It wasn’t wasted as far as I am concerned. As Crown just said, half an hour in such pleasant company ‒’

  ‘No gallantry, please, Mr Wayman. I’ve had enough masculine patronage for one morning. Thank you for the coffee. I’ll bid you good-day.’

  She nodded coolly and turned into the livery yard. Stephen made his way to The Revellers in Lock Street. Had his ‘gallantry’ been patronizing? Well, yes, perhaps it had. It was certainly not his usual style. But did the young woman have to take herself so seriously? He decided to put it out of his mind.

  On the way home, however, he caught up with Betony on the road and drove behind her for about a mile. When she looked back and saw who it was, she pulled over onto the grass verge and stopped, signalling to him that he was to pass. Instead he drew up close beside her and they looked at each other, glimmeringly, while the two ponies, the black and the grey, leant together, nose to nose.

  ‘Really, Miss Izzard, don’t you think this is absurd? I asked you to have coffee with me because I wanted to talk to you. That I did Crown a favour at the same time was just a joke and nothing more. I certainly wouldn’t have asked you merely on his account alone.’

  ‘And yet you will vote for him, probably.’

  ‘In the absence of someone better, yes, I daresay I shall.’ His answer, somehow, was unexpected. It brought a smile to her lips. In another moment they were laughing together and all her frostiness was gone. He spoke again.

  ‘My son would never have forgiven me if I had seriously offended you. Neither would Emma, come to that. I hope there’ll be peace between us from now on.’

  ‘I don’t see why there shouldn’t be.’

  The two traps kept shifting a little. The ponies, having become bored with each other, were growing restive between the shafts. Betony drew in the slackened reins.

  ‘Will you go ahead, Mr Wayman?’

  ‘No, I’m waiting for you,’ he said.

  So Betony pulled out into the road again and touched the pony to a trot. Stephen followed close behind, rather enjoying the advantage it gave him, of watching her and the way she drove. You could learn quite a lot, he told himself, from the way a person handled a horse, and as far as her driving was concerned, he had no fault to find in her. But there was something else as well; something he admired even more; and that was her easy naturalness. Plainly the girl was conscious of him: she would not have been human otherwise; but there was no affectation in her; she felt no need to act a part merely because he was watching her. She had a clear view of the world. Whatever happened, she would be herself.

  At Rider’s Cross, knowing that he would be turning right, she looked round and nodded to him, raising her whip in a little salute. He responded by raising his cap. And all the way home along Rayner’s Lane he carried in his mind an image of her, sitting erect in the pony trap, her fair hair, in the old-fashioned style, twisted in a knot at the nape of her neck, under the fur-trimmed pillbox hat.

  When he got home, Aunt Doe was in the garden, cutting broccoli for lunch. He leapt from the trap and went over to her.

  ‘What was that tale about Miss Izzard jilting her fiancé on the day of the wedding? ‒ Do you remember it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I remember it,’ Aunt Doe said. She stood erect and turned to him. ‘It was something to do with her foster-brother, a boy brought up with her family. I believe he was blinded in the war. The day Miss Izzard was due to be married, he was in trouble with the police. She put off her wedding to go to him. Her fiancé couldn’t forgive her for it, so the wedding never took place at all.’

  ‘And her foster-brother? What happened to him?’

  ‘It seems the poor boy was desperately ill. That’s why Miss Izzard was so concerned. I believe he died that very day.’ Aunt Doe looked at Stephen’s face. ‘I don’t remember the ins and outs. But Mrs Bessemer’s sure to know. If you want the details, you’d better ask her.’

  But Stephen, although he was interested, had no intention of gossiping with Mrs Bessemer. It was enough for him to know that, whatever the details of the story, Betony Izzard had not jilted her fiancé out of caprice or out of wilful cruelty. He said something of this to Aunt Doe, and she gave a little impatient shrug.

  ‘You could tell she wasn’t that sort of girl, just by looking at her, I would have thought.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Stephen said.

  There had never been a general election like this one. Huntlip was full of fluttering posters, and slogans were chalked up ever
ywhere. On polling day, at eleven o’clock, Mr and Mrs Talbot of Crayle Court drove up to the school to cast their votes, and behind them, in a huge brake drawn by four horses, came their employees from the estate. Mr Talbot wore the Tory colours in his lapel, and Mrs Talbot, who was very young, wore a hot-house carnation, dyed blue, pinned to the bosom of her coat. When they emerged from the school and drove away, the estate employees stood and cheered. They then went in to cast their own votes, and five of them at least voted for the opposite party.

  Betony was busy throughout the day, driving about in the pony trap, fetching voters from outlying places. She wore no colours about her person; sported no posters on the trap; she was no more than a ferryman and observed a strict neutrality. She did not stop for lunch, but ate her sandwiches as she travelled about, and at three o’clock, when darkness fell, she lit the two lamps and carried on.

  At six o’clock, as arranged, she returned home to Cobbs. Her father and mother and Great-grumpa Tewke, dressed in their best as befitted the occasion, stood waiting in the fold, and Betony, jumping to the ground, relinquished the trap in her father’s favour. Granna Tewke was not going to vote, but she had come out to see them off.

  ‘I’m too old for that caper, driving out in the cold,’ she said. ‘And so is some others that I could name.’ She gave Great-grumpa a prod in the back. ‘Gadding about at your age and you so comical these past few days!’

  The old man had not been too well. The doctor had warned him against exertion. But he was determined to cast his vote, and, helped up by willing hands, he heaved himself into the trap.

  ‘Where’s Dicky?’ Betony asked.

  ‘There’s no room for him in the trap. He says he’ll go later when he’s finished work.’

  Betony followed Granna indoors, and Granna gave her a cup of tea.

  ‘You ent going out again, I hope? Not on a nasty night like this?’

  ‘Yes, I am, when the trap comes back. But there aren’t many more calls now.’