Saville (31 page)

They cut the field the following day. The foreman drove the tractor, Gordon, the bow-legged man, sitting on the binder with its tall metal lever, watching the cutting of the blade, the binding
of the sheaves, their slow, rhythmical ejection from the side of the machine. Colin and the tall, bony man stooked behind. They covered six rows of sheaves between them, carrying them in pairs and setting them in the stooks, eight pairs to each, angled slightly inwards to prevent them falling.

‘Do you know what I’d do if I was in charge of this war?’ the bony man had said. ‘I’d get a lot of animals, infect them with cholera, rabies, dysentery, beriberi, and drop them all over Germany every night. You wouldn’t have to drop bombs, or anything, or have a thousand planes. You could go through the entire country in a week dropping down rats and mice on parachutes. Drop them near large towns, near rivers, and near farms, tha knows, at harvest-time.’

He gazed round him as if imagining some such incident taking place in the surrounding fields.

‘You could overrun the country inside a week. Tha’d have no opposition, tha knows, at all. They’d all be in hospital, or at home in bed. Hitler. There’d not be one of them fit to stand.’

Later, when they reached the corner of the field, he lit a cigarette.

‘Another thing I’d do, with these submarines. I’d drop an electric cable round their harbours at night, fastened up to the electricity, tha knows, with electric wires. And whenever one of them came out, or touched it, I’d switch it on. You’d see the buggers jump; they’d come up like freshboiled fish, tha knows: alive.’

The bony man worked slowly. Frequently he would pause, gazing round, looking over to the tractor and binder as it cut against the wall of corn, stooping casually, despite his height, to hoist the sheaves, bending and straightening, the movement scarcely perceptible.

‘You don’t want to work too hard, tha knows. They’ll still have to pay us if we’re here at ten tonight.’

They reached the bottom of the field: he could see into the copse. A pool of water lay in the shadow of the wind-blown trees; branches curled down beneath its surface. A dry dust rose from the sharp, cut-off stalks as they trudged between the rows of sheaves. A single row of stooks ran, parallel with the hedge, down one long side of the field.

They turned at the bottom. The tractor puffed slowly up the slope above them, stopping occasionally while the bow-legged man got down, cleared some obstruction from the teeth of the cutters, or rooted out some unfastened sheaf. Sometimes when the binder stopped all they could hear was the distant barking of a dog or the calling of some voice in the large house beyond the trees. It was usually at these moments that the bony man sat down in the shade of the hedge, lighting a cigarette, appearing for a moment to fall asleep, the cigarette smoking in his mouth, Colin working on, stooking the man’s sheaves as well his own, the bony man rising as the tractor started or reappeared over the crest of the slope.

A broad swathe now had been cut round the contour of the field. ‘How long to dinner, dost think?’ the bony man said. He had no watch; he’d brought his carrier bag to the field and intermittently, after they’d advanced some distance, he’d go back to retrieve it from beneath the hedge and place it some little distance farther on. ‘I make it thirty-five minutes’, he added, ‘by the sun. And I bet I’m correct within one or two minutes.’ He was continually watching the tractor now; each time it paused he raised his head, a sheaf in his hand, seeing whether the foreman was breaking off for lunch.

‘He’ll work through till one o’clock, will Tom. He doesn’t much care for time, tha knows. I hope old Gordon reminds him, or we’ll be stuck down here for hours.’

And yet, only moments later, the tractor stopped. The clatter subsided: the puffs of blue smoke had disappeared.

The bow-legged man was already moving off across the field; the foreman himself was stooping to the binder.

‘That’s it! That’s dinner!’ the bony man said.

He retrieved his carrier bag and, half-running, half-walking, started off towards the track.

Colin, more slowly, followed on behind. By the time he reached the yard the bow-legged man and the bony man were already stretched out beneath the tree. It was some twenty minutes later before the foreman appeared along the track, going into the shed, with a spanner in his hand, comparing it with several others, coming out, his canvas bag across his shoulder,
setting himself down in the open door, the shape of his motorbike gleaming in the dark behind.

‘I think I’ve fixed it now, then, Jack.’

‘I told you them nuts were on too tight.’

They called across the yard for a little while.

‘And how’s your stooking going, kipper, then?’

‘All right,’ Colin said.

‘Not going too fast for yon loafer, then?’

‘Who’s a loafer?’ the bony man had said.

‘Don’t set him up, Jack,’ the foreman said, ‘with any bad ideas.’

‘Nay, Jack doesn’t have any ideas, Tom,’ the bow-legged man had said.

‘I might get one or two from yon college-boy,’ the bony man had said.

They laughed.

At the end of the hour they went back to the field.

The day was hotter than the one before. They worked uphill now, stooping to the slope. At one point the tractor halted and for an hour or more the foreman and the bow-legged man stooked the sheaves themselves.

‘They won’t be doing that for long,’ the bony man had said. ‘Get sat on that tractor and they don’t like shifting off again.’

The tractor re-started after a little while.

‘Sithee: what did I tell thee?’ The bony man sat determinedly in the bottom of the hedge while Colin worked on alone.

The farmer appeared in the middle of the afternoon. There were two other figures with him, a girl and a man in jodhpurs who carried a gun. The man with the gun and the girl strolled round the diminishing area of uncut wheat, following the binder.

‘After rabbits,’ the bony man had said. ‘They’ll come out like flies when they get down to the last bit o’ corn. I was hoping for one or two, tha knows, mesen.’

The farmer, as he waited for the binder to come round, checked on some of the stooks himself, re-setting sheaves, lifting one or two up and adding them on.

‘It’s a good place to work, is this,’ the bony man said. ‘He’s
got two or three farms and he never stops for long. We’re t’farthest away from t’farm itself. That’s why he relies so much on Tom.’

The gun went off; a puff of smoke rose up.

‘He couldn’t hit a rabbit if it sat on t’end on his barrel. That’s Smithy’s son. And that’s his daughter. There might be summat theer for you.’ He laughed across. ‘Bit of all right, tha knows, is yon.’

A little later when the two figures of the jodhpured man and the girl came closer Colin glanced across; he saw a fresh, red-cheeked face and fairish, auburn hair, and turned back to the sheaves, not looking up again until they’d passed.

After a little while the farmer left, the car with its three occupants bouncing off along the rutted track.

The day grew hotter.

They stooked a single row now, half-way up the slope: a side and a half and they would have circuited the field. They met the unfinished row the foreman and the bow-legged man had started, and went to work then across the top of the field.

‘It’s be too much to reckon that he’d bring summat for us all to drink,’ the bony man had said. ‘Last farm I worked at the farmer’s wife wa’re out all day: glasses of ale, and ginger pop. It was a pleasure to work, I can tell you that.’

The indications of a tennis court were visible amongst the distant gardens: white-clad figures moved to and fro; the faint noise of a ball being hit came floating to the field.

Several aircraft passed overhead; they were too high in the sky to see. A vapour trail had formed, and then another: a thin striation of white marks, like veins, faded against the blueness overhead.

He worked with a regular rhythm now; the lightness he’d felt in the morning had already gone, replaced by a cautious calculation of how many hours of the day were left. They worked without speaking, the bony man taking fewer rests, crouching, when he did so, in the shade of a stook, or lying sprawled out in the shade of the hedge, calling out then, half-mockingly, if Colin paused.

‘Nay, don’t let him see you resting, lad. I’m the gaffer, tha knows, down here.’

The farmer came back: the three figures got out of the car. It was growing late.

The tractor paused on the upward slope and the foreman got down from the seat, the three figures then standing by the binder.

‘He’ll not keep us on overtime,’ the bony man said. ‘He’ll just keep Tom and Gordon back. He’ll send us two off packing.’

And a little later, with the band of uncut corn now like a narrow path down the centre of the field, the farmer, waving, had signalled them across.

‘That’s us done for. We could have had two hours, at least.’

At the far end of the field the younger man with the gun had given a shout.

A rabbit, its legs kicking, was bowled over as it ran.

A second rabbit broke away: a small bundle of fur darting away across the low-cut stalks.

The young man fired again: the ball of fur flew up, kicking, then, with a sudden convulsion, fell over on its side.

‘You two can get off now. It’s just after five,’ the farmer said. ‘We’ll finish cutting tonight and start stooking first thing tomorrow morning. There’ll be too much dew to start cutting then.’

He was holding the rabbit by its ears; a stream of blood ran from its mouth.

‘And how’re you making out, young man? Got the hang of it, have you, or is Jack here having to do it all for you?’

‘Oh, he does one or two bits and pieces, Mr Smith,’ the bony man had said.

The girl, her face reddened by the sun, had glanced across; she was standing half-way to the car, looking down the field towards her brother.

She pulled back the hair from her eyes, calling, and pointing down to the uncut corn.

The younger man had fired again.

‘We mu’n have us a good bag today,’ the farmer said.

Jack, his carrier beneath his arm, had gone ahead. He’d already reached the track and was dusting off his clothes as he walked along. He lit a cigarette as he reached the trees, cupping
his hand; a breeze, light, blowing in faint gusts, had suddenly sprung up.

The young man, sighting the gun, had fired again; the bow-legged man on the binder was pointing to the corn. A dog in the back of the car had begun to bark.

The girl, hearing it, turned back.

‘Don’t let it out, Audrey,’ the farmer said. ‘We mu’n keep it till we’re down to the last few yards.’

Colin reached the track. The girl, flushed by the heat, was standing by the car, holding the door and talking to the dog.

She glanced up as he passed.

‘What kind of dog is it, then?’ he said.

‘A collie.’

She glanced up again, quickly, then called sharply to the dog.

She had a thin rash around her neck: it showed on her arms below the short-cut sleeve of her blouse.

‘Is he good for rabbiting?’ he said.

‘Not really. No.’

She opened the car door and caught the dog’s collar as it tried to rush out.

Half-stooping, still holding the dog, she walked back across the field.

Colin turned to the track. He could see into the car: cartridges, a flask, several metal mugs and a white cloth wrapped round what looked like sandwiches.

He went on, dusting down his clothes, towards the sheds.

The field had been cut when they got back the following day, the sheaves strewn in rows across the contour of the hill. Colin worked with the foreman at the bottom of the field. The stooks stood up like little houses, the tyre-marks of the tractor leaving silver-coloured streaks across the stubble.

‘How many rabbits did you get last night?’ he said.

‘Four.’ The foreman laughed. ‘Though going by the commotion you’d have thought it wa’ nearer twenty.’

‘How many hours’ overtime did you get?’ he said.

‘And what’s that to do with you?’ The foreman laughed again. ‘Eager for more work, then, are you?’

Yet later, as they walked back to the sheds, he added, ‘As it is,
we could have done with you staying on last night. We’ve another field, tha knows, to cut tomorrow. We mu’n stay behind and oppen out.’

Yet after lunch Colin and the bony man were working in the field alone: the foreman and Gordon had set off to the second field. Relieved of supervision, the bony man spent longer spells beneath the hedge, stepping out of its shade at intervals, quickening the pace when he saw the comparatively few that, working alone, Colin himself had done.

‘They’ll expect us, you know, to get more on than this.’

The intervals of moving up and down the field got shorter; more than half of it was stooked. The heat, in the centre, was greater than it was on the track or working round the edge, the ground dustier, the scent of the straw more overpowering. His clothes were sodden now with sweat. After their first hardening, his hands had begun to bleed again.

A group of boys had come to play in the copse at the foot of the hill. He’d seen them earlier, coming down the track from the direction of the house beyond the trees; they were carrying a dinghy which, after they’d raised it over the hedge at the bottom of the field, they lowered on to the pond. For an hour he heard their cries, seeing the flashing of the water: splashed columns of it were sprayed up at intervals beneath the trees. Finally, when he and the bony man had reached the hedge, he glanced across.

A small island stood in the centre of the pond: it was overgrown with brambles. A large nest was built near the water’s edge. There was a smell of decay from the copse itself.

The boys were paddling the dinghy towards the island; there were three of them, two in costumes, one of whom, as Colin watched, plunged into the water and, to the shouts of the other two, began to push the dinghy vigorously before him, spraying the two still in the boat.

One of them, in shirt sleeves and shorts, he recognized as Stafford; he was standing in the middle of the dinghy directing the other boy who, bare-chested, was fanning the oar ineffectually at the water.