Farm Boy

T
here’s an old green Fordson tractor in the back of Grandpa’s barn, always covered in cornsacks. When I was very little, I used to go in there, pull off the cornsacks, climb up and drive it all over the farm. I’d be gone all morning sometimes, but they always knew where to find me. I’d be ploughing or tilling or mowing, anything I wanted. It didn’t matter to me that the engine didn’t work, that one of the iron wheels was missing, that I couldn’t even move the steering wheel.

Up there on my tractor, I was a farmer, like my Grandpa, and I could go all over the farm, wherever I wanted. When I’d finished, I always had to put the cornsacks back and cover it up. Grandpa said I had to, so that it didn’t get dusty. That old tractor, he said, was very important, very special. I knew that already of course, but it wasn’t until many years later that I discovered just how important, just how special it was.

I come from a family of farmers going back generations and generations, but I wouldn’t have known much about it if Grandpa hadn’t told me. My own mother and father never seemed that interested in family roots, or maybe they just preferred not to talk about them. My mother grew up on the farm. She was the youngest of four sisters, and none of them had stayed on the farm any longer than they’d had to. School took her away to college.

College took her off to London, to teaching first, then to meeting my father, a townie through and through, and one who made no secret of his dislike for the countryside and everything to do with it.

‘All right in pictures, I suppose,’ he’d say, ‘just as long as you don’t have to smell it or walk in it.’ And he’d say that in front of Grandpa, too.

I have always felt they were a little ashamed of Grandpa and his old-fashioned ways, and I never really understood why – until recently, that is. When I found out, it wasn’t Grandpa I was ashamed of.

I always loved going down to Devon, to Burrow, his old thatched house at the bottom of a rutty lane. He was born there. He’d never lived anywhere else, nor had any desire to do so. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who seems utterly contented with his own place on earth, with the life he’s lived. That’s not to say that he never grumbles. He does – about the weather, about his television reception – he loves detective series, whodunnits, police dramas. He’ll curse the foxes when they tip over his dustbins, and shout abuse at the jets when they come screaming low over the chimney pots. But he never ever complains about his lot in life. Best of all, he never pretends to be someone he isn’t, and what’s more he doesn’t want me to be anyone I’m not. I like that in him, I always have. That’s maybe why I’ve spent so many of my school holidays with him down on the farm in Devon.

Sometimes he’ll tell me how things were when he was young. He doesn’t say things were better then, or worse. He just talks about how they were. I think it’s because he loves to remember.

Grandpa loves his swallows. We’d often watch them together as they skimmed low over the fields and he’d shake his head in wonder. He once told me why it was that he loved swallows so much. That was when he first told me about his father, my great-grandfather, or ‘the Corporal’, as everyone in the village called him. And that’s when I first heard about Joey, too.

‘Swallows,’ Grandpa began, settling back in his chair. I knew I was in for a story. ‘Now they must’ve been the very first bird I ever set eyes on. And that’s funny, that is. My father, when he was a lad, used to go round the farms seeking out all the sparrows’ nests and crows’ nests and rooks’ nests. He’d pinch the eggs, see; and he’d get money for that, for every egg in his hat. It wasn’t a lot, but every penny helped. Sparrows and crows and rooks, they was a terrible nuisance for the farmers. They’d soon get at the corn if you let them. Anyway, Father got himself into some trouble, and it was all on account of the swallows. He had a friend – I can’t remember names, never could – but a school friend anyhow; and this lad, he went and robbed a swallow’s nest, silly monkey, instead of a sparrow’s nest like he should have. Well, Father saw what he’d done, and he saw red. He gave him an awful licking, so the lad went home with a bleeding nose. Father went and put the swallow’s eggs back. Next thing Father knows, the boy’s mother comes round and boxes his ears for him, and he gets sent to bed without any tea. Not hardly fair when you think about it, is it? Anyway, putting the eggs back didn’t do no good. Mother bird never came back.

‘Father was always getting into scrapes when he was a lad. But the worst scrape he ever got hisself into was the war, First World War. And just like with the swallow’s eggs, he didn’t want to fight anyone. It just happened. This time it was all on account of the horse. See, he didn’t go off to the war because he wanted to fight for King and Country like lots of others did. It wasn’t like that. He went because his horse went, because Joey went.

‘Father was just a farm boy when the war broke out; fourteen, that’s all. Like me, he didn’t get a lot of schooling. He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most of what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing. He was right enough there, I reckon. Anyway, that’s by the by. He had this young colt, broke him to halter, broke him to ride, broke him to plough. Joey, he called him. He had four white socks on him, a white cross on his forehead, and he was bay. Turned out to be his best friend in all the world. They had an old mare, too. Zoey, she was called; and the two of them ploughed like they’d been born to it, which they was, I suppose. Weren’t a team of working horses in the parish to touch them. Joey was strong as an ox, and gentle as a lamb. Zoey had the brains, kept the furrow straight as an arrow.