Charles Palliser (66 page)

would be far beyond her pocket.

One thing was clear to me: I had to escape. And it had to be sooner rather than later because I could see how much stronger I was than all but the three biggest boys. It was plain to me that, worked and fed as the others were, I would be getting weaker and weaker from that moment. Eventually, worn down by the exertions of the day I fell asleep.

The next morning we were awoken early by Hal and Roger entering the barn and laying about them with their whips. They had a stack of wooden platters which they threw to the ground as we scrambled for them, and then they ladled from a bucket a helping of cold oat-porage which, I realized later, was always cooked — or, rather, over-cooked —

the evening before with the potatoes and left to cool overnight. Immediately after this we were driven out into the yard and divided into two work-gangs. I was allocated to Hal’s and, with three or four others, was led by him out of the yard. As we went through the gate into a big field I noticed a number of Death-caps in the weeds near some grassy mounds and a newly-dug heap of earth. Hal marched us to a distant field where we were put to clearing stones and then building a boundary-wall with them. Stephen had gone off with Roger’s gang.

The labour was not as arduous as threshing had been the day before, and we were not so closely under the over-looker’s observation. And so as I worked I was able to think about the way of dividing up dinner that I had seen the previous evening and that the boys had told me was practised every night. It meant that the biggest boys obtained far more than their fair share while the smallest obtained too little — and Stephen almost nothing — and merely wasted their strength in hurting each other. It occurred to me that Mr Silverlight would

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have insisted — and Mr Pentecost have denied — that there was a better way. And surely Mr Silverlight was correct.

Hal allowed us half-an-hour to rest after our “piece”, and then we worked on until late afternoon, when we returned for dinner. Just as on the previous day, the brothers tipped the buckets of potatoes into the trough and we had to wait while Quigg delivered his usual oration, then clapped his hands as the signal to rush forward and begin struggling for the potatoes.

Again, I hung back and noticed that Stephen did the same. As before, the bigger boys made off with an armful and both Richard and Big Thorn managed to wrest several potatoes from the younger boys by using their comparative size and strength, while Little Thorn also did fairly well by picking up any that were dropped in the
mêlée.
Once again the losers were the smallest boys who were reduced to fighting over the few potatoes remaining.

While I was watching this, Quigg suddenly came up behind me and seized me by the hair, raising me to tip-toe.

“Art tha trying to cheat me?” he asked.

“What do you mean, sir?” I gasped.

“Dost reckon that if tha dostna eat tha munna be made to work?” he snarled. “But tha sail see: I sail get my share of work from tha.”

He slapped me hard on the face and the force of the blow, as he simultaneously released his grip on my hair, felled me. As I picked myself up it occurred to me that he paid no attention to the fact that Stephen was similarly making no attempt to fight for food.

When the Quiggs had gone, securing the door behind them and then releasing the dogs, I said to my friends: “Why do you let them make you do that?”

“What other way is there?” Richard asked as he handed a potato to Stephen and then offered one to me.

“No,” I said. “I won’t take it because you fought for it.”

I saw Stephen redden at the implied reproach.

“What should we do?” Richard asked.

“We should divide them up fairly. Everyone should get two, three, or four, according to his size, and after that the remainder should be divided equally. That is the principle of Equity.”

I had spoken loudly enough to be heard by the others:

“Stuff!” jeered Ned. “This is the fairest way. The ones who need it most are the strongest and so they get what they need.”

“Aye,” said Bart. “What’s fairer than that?”

“You
get more than you need,” I said. “While others get too little or nothing.”

“So what?” Ned sneered and turned back to his game of cards.

“Don’t you see,” I said to the others in an undertone. “It doesn’t have to be this way.

We out-number the other three and we could seize all the food and divide it up fairly.”

The very thought frightened them, and yet I could sec that it excited them, too. They resisted, but their argument amounted to no more than that because it had always been done that way, there was no other way of doing it, and by the time I settled down to sleep I believed I had won my case.

The next day I was assigned to Hal’s work-gang again and spent the day collecting stones as before. I took the opportunity, during our baiting-time, to tell the other boys what had been agreed the previous night and, though fearfully, most of them consented to support me. Richard had done the same

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in Roger’s gang and so that evening, when Quigg gave the signal for us to start fighting, nobody moved. Somewhat surprised, Ned and Bart swaggered forward and collected an armful each but Paul, whom I had forewarned, hung back. As the captain and his lieutenant began to move away, I moved forward and seized some of the potatoes. This was the agreed signal, and to my relief enough of the other boys now supported me to enable us to over-power Ned and Bart. I threw them four potatoes each and shared out the others.

The Quiggs were amazed at this turn of events and accused me of being a trouble-maker and of having arranged the whole thing to get more food for myself. Obviously at a loss as to their course of action, they contented themselves with driving us with brutal blows of their whips into the barn. When they had left us I told Ned and Bart that from henceforth this was the way that the food was to be shared out. They were sullen and said very little, but Paul agreed to abide by the new rules.

The next day Quigg himself took a gang to which I was assigned and I spent an exhausting day threshing corn. When the signal was given at dinner-time no-one moved except me, and I shared out the food as before. The Quiggs, who were furious again, urged Ned and Bart to fight us but, seeing how united we were, they declined.

The rest of the boys were euphoric at their victory and I was particularly gratified to think that Stephen would at last be receiving his fair share, for he seemed to me to be visibly weaker even than when I had arrived.

The next day I was assigned to Roger’s gang and so was with Stephen for the first time. To my bewilderment, as we set off Roger threw at him a kind of leather harness attached to wide pieces of leather and made him, helped by Little Thorn and myself, carry a heavy two-handled wooden implement consisting of a beam about six feet long with a triangular metal blade at the end.

When we reached the field we were to work in, the mystery was solved. To my amazement Stephen secured the harness round his waist, thereby attaching the pieces of leather to his thighs. He then held the implement before him and I now realized it was a breast-plough. The field had been harvested and our task was to burn-brake it which is to say, to pare the stubble so that it could be burnt. This meant that Stephen had to push the heavy share before him with his thighs which were protected by the leather clappers.

My task was to walk ahead of him pushing the picket, the blade, from side to side at the correct level. I found this extremely hard work — and somewhat dangerous — but the effort required by Stephen to supply the driving force must have been far more arduous.

“Can’t you let it rise?” he gasped once while Roger was watching the others who were removing stones, digging drainage-ditches, and repairing walls.

I realized that it was easier to cut the stubble the higher the blade was, and so I let the picket rise. But when Roger came back he quickly noticed and cut me with the whip.

And so after this I only dared ease Stephen’s labour very briefly when Roger was not near, even though he begged me to do it more often.

Roger stayed near us sauntering about smoking his pipe but occasionally running with his whip raised to strike at any of the others whom he suspected of slacking. He gave us all fewer and shorter rests than his brother did, but it was clear to me that he was determined to work Stephen and myself particularly hard.

After a couple of hours Stephen was so exhausted that he could hardly stand.

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Seeing this, Roger walked behind him constantly striking him on the shoulders with the whip.

At last I cried out: “Let me do it! You’re killing him!”

Roger looked at me with a strange smile: “Tha’rt in a hurry,” he said. “Wait tha turn.”

At least, I reflected as Little Thorn and I helped Stephen to stagger home at the end of the day, he would get his handful of potatoes. However, I noticed that the Quiggs seemed unusually pleased with themselves and when the time came for the distribution of the food, I found out why.

When the potatoes had been emptied into the trough Roger and Hal placed themselves between it and us and then Quigg beckoned Ned, Bart, and Paul forward and told them to help themselves to as many as they could carry.

“Don’t, Paul!” I called out, earning myself a lash from Roger’s whip.

“Hold hard, lad,” Quigg said to his son, to my astonishment. He grinned at me: “Let him see he’s beat fair.”

The triumvirate began to eat the potatoes and when they had almost all gone, Quigg picked out about half of the rest of us — including the two Thorns but not Richard or Stephen or me — and ordered them forward. Then he told them to eat as many of the remaining potatoes as they could. After glancing anxiously at us, they began to do so.

“Stop!” I cried. “Share them with us or we’ll all be the worse of it.”

The appeals from the rest of us made no impression, however.

Then Quigg cried to us: “Come and fight for ’em if you want any.”

Despite my attempts to urge them to hold back, the boys who had been left with Richard and Stephen and me ran forward and began fighting their former comrades while the Quiggs roared with laughter. Richard and I continued to exhort them not to, but at last Richard himself — with a shame-faced grimace towards Stephen and me —

joined in the
mêlée.

I knew that the cause of Equity was lost. And so it turned out for the next evening the boys fought for the food exactly as they had before my initiative, and now, to the immense satisfaction of the Quiggs, I was forced to do so myself. So Richard and I fought in alliance against the smaller boys and managed to gather just enough for ourselves and Stephen.

Although it was the end of July, during the next days the sky was low and grey and at intervals a drizzling rain fell. I foresaw with dread a procession of days like this following one another until I was numbed and starved into submission. I had to escape. And yet I could not imagine how Richard and Stephen, the one crippled and the other weakened by illness and hunger, could make the attempt.

The next week or two dragged past during which I was either burn-braking or stone-picking — which was exhausting because we had to use a rake to get the stones up and load them into the box to carry to where a wall was to be built. Because of the long daylight hours we carried our dew-bit to the fields for our breakfast to save time. I could not grow accustomed to the diet of hog-peas, oatmeal, buttermilk, “turmot-tops”, oaten cakes that were often thick with mould, and occasionally pieces of bacon. And always the black rye-bread. I knew I would get weaker on this regimen and I learned from the others how much worse things would be later in the year when winter came and we would be put to flailing corn and making hurdles in the freezing barn.

The composition of the gangs was different each day but I noticed that FACES FROM THE PAST

303

Stephen was always put into Roger’s. I soon discovered that Hal was the least brutal of the three Quiggs and always rejoiced when he was my tasker. When, for example, we were working far from the farm-house, and our midday “piece” was brought by the little maid-servant — bent over as she bore a bucket of potatoes or a basket of bread — Hal always allocated the food reasonably fairly himself, whereas his father and brother always made us fight for it.

Now it was that I had a nightmare which has often come back to me since then. I dreamed that a dark hunched shape was approaching me and though I tried to flee, it bore down on me relentlessly and loomed over me. Just as I realized with horror that it was a huge spider, it spoke to me in a soft, frightened voice that I recognised: “Help me.

Help me, Johnnie.” I started back and tried to run but my limbs would not move.

Shuddering, I stared at those waving legs and tentacles not wanting to recognise the face I feared to find in the midst of them. Then in heart-breaking tones she said: “I don’t want to be like this.”

I started out of my sleep in a sweat to find my companions sleeping peacefully around me. All my doubts and fears were renewed, and so the following evening I brought up the subject of escaping again.

“It’s impossible,” Richard said. “You must have seen as you came that the farm is surrounded by wild moorland for miles and miles in every direction. There are no villages and only a few scattered sheep-farms.”

“So even if you managed to get off the farm,” Little Thorn went on, “you could not seek shelter from anyone in the neighbourhood for they all know of the rewards the Quiggs offer for returning one of us. And if you could not seek shelter you would need to get off the moors very quickly or the Quiggs would catch you. You see, there is only one road and they would use the dogs to scent the way you had taken, and then they would overtake you on horseback.”

“Then,” I said, “could I not simply strike out across the moors ignoring the road, so that the Quiggs would lose the advantage of their horses?”

“Yes,” said Richard, “but it would be slow going and difficult to keep a straight course, and the dogs would catch you quickly.”