Lucifer Before Sunrise (16 page)
Read Lucifer Before Sunrise Online
Authors: Henry Williamson
“But will we get Gogney's tackle in time for seed-wheat, Dad?”
“I asked, last May, for the threshing drum to come here early, but I'll remind him when I get home. So if we plough
now
, we'll be able to drill some of the Squarehead wheat early on this high ground, and so get a good plant before the frosts. Don't you think that's right?”
Billy said he didn't know. They were now on the way to the Lower Brock Hanger. Those neglected roots! The mangolds growing there were still golf and cricket ball size, as when Phillip had left for Devon. He tried to restrain himself but the miserable sight made him cry, “See how hard and brick-like the soil is between the rows! How
can
they grow? Why
didn't
you have them horse-hoed?”
“I dunno.”
“Didn't mother tell Luke to get them done, as I wrote, and also telephoned?”
“Yes,” he said. “Only Luke said it was too wet.”
“But did it rain
all
the time?”
“Most days it did.”
“You should have watched your chance. This land can be slippery one morning, and dry the same afternoon. What feed shall we have for the fourteen bullocks going into the yard up here? For five months we must hold them here, treading the straw of two stacks into muck to be spread on this starved yellow soil. And the only food they will get during the winter will be these wretched roots! They won't last
two
months, let alone five! There's only a five-hundred-gallon tank for rainwater, and much of the water they'll require should be in the roots. Now we'll have to sell them in January, probably, when no one wants store cattleâthe worst possible time to sell stores!”
He stood still. He shouldn't have gone to Devon. If Luke couldn't or wouldn't take orders from him in former days, how could Lucy and Billy prevail? Seeing his son's face, he thought of
an Austrian postage stamp surcharged, or over-printed, by the image of Hitler, after the Anschluss of 1938. Was he over-printing Billy?
“The blame is mine entirely, Boy Billy. Of course Luke knows how necessary it is to keep the soil friable between growing roots. A couple of hours stirring this soil with the horse-hoe when it was damp would have made all the difference between a quarter-crop and a half-crop.”
“Luke says it's the Bad Lands.”
“I say it's the Bad Farmer. That's me!”
Clouds were breaking, it felt warm, as though the sun were about to shine through the low nimbus overcast. Wind was from the south-west. Was that the rattle of a reaper-and-binder in the distance? Was Charles Box cutting already, while he'd sent the men to footle about their own mess in the hovel, where they were probably smoking despite the Fire Insurance notice in red letters displayed on one beam?
“We'll begin ploughing the Higher Brock Hanger right away. It's in proper fettle. The flag must be covered properly. That is to say, use the deep-digger plough. You know what the flag is, don't you? It's the fringe of grass on the far side of the
furrow-slice
. We don't want any clover or grass growing. The
deep-digger
will flop it all over and bury it. I've got a little
superphosphate
put by, we'll broadcast it on the seed-bed. If this wet is bad for harvest it's good for quick ploughing. Is the old tractor on rubbers, or iron wheels?”
“On rubbers, all ready for drawing the reaper.”
“Well done, Billy. By the way, we must get some steel
spud-wheels
for the Ford-Ferguson, it won't plough this stiff land properly with tyres. They'll slip. A new pair of rear wheels costs an awful lotâforty-five poundsâthat's the Lend-Lease price. Eight pounds before the war. I must advertise for a pair. They're very hard to get.”
“How about drawing the reaper with the new Fergie, Dad? It would be just the right speed in second gear. Then we could keep the old Dicker on spud-wheels, and not interrupt the ploughing.”
“That's a jolly good idea! Let's go down and get it, and start at once. Look, this soil is beautifully moist, after all the rain. It's now or never, with this yellow brick, or breck soil.”
The new improved model of the Ford-Ferguson hydraulic tractor, sent on loan to Phillip by Harry Ferguson, then in America, was bigger than the old machine Billy called the Dickerâthe
Donkeyâwith a stronger engine. It had an adjustable chassis, with a range of wheel widths for two-crop cultivation. It had a self-starter, and an engine smooth as a motor-car engine. It was comfortable to drive. The engine had a vapouriser, and ran on paraffin.
*
The weather cleared. They could now cut. Luke and Billy worked until 9.30 p.m. with reaper-and-binder, while Phillip ploughed the green olland. The furrows turned up loose and crumbling behind the deep-dig plough pulled in bottom gear.
The next day they set up oat sheaves around the edges of the Scalt, carting those from the lower boundary to the centre of the field where the winds would dry them. It rained again that evening, but on the following day, a Sunday, it was fine, so Phillip ploughed more of the Higher Brock. It rained again towards nightfall. He hoped that the heavy golden-brown oats on the Cold Old Land would not sprout. They were soaked. The weight of corn and water in them made them twice as heavy as the sheaves on the Scalt.
On the Monday it was still raining, but when it cleared later they started to cut the pedigree wheat on the Bustard, continuing early the following morning. Wheat can be cut, and stacked, wet. The strong round straw allows air to pass through. It was a fine crop, estimated thirteen sacks to the acre. The straw was thick and pinkish.
All day, rain or no rain, Phillip ploughed-in the aftermath of the hay on the Higher Brock. The rye-grass was now over a foot high. That would help to give it much-needed humus. He was convinced that this land, swept by east winds, should have wheat sown as soon as possible after August, to establish a plant before starlings flew in flocks over the North Sea to dig up the milky grains. With their equipment, he told Billy, they ought never to have a crop failure on the farm, as had sometimes happened in the old days of draught-bullocks and apple-wood ploughs scratching the soil.
He continued up and down the field, turning to watch with satisfaction moist soil covering the green flag of grass and clover. The hay-seeds he had drilled there last season, against the advice of both Matt and Luke, a day or two after the barley was sown, had made a fine plant. The barley straw at harvest had been short, clover-layer high, the corn an excellent crop considering the drought of June and early Julyâthis had been during and after
the blitzkrieg in France. He had discovered that on the Bad Lands the small-seeds should be drilled immediately on top of, but across, the barley. It was a district of light rainfallâand a soil of poor fertility. In the old days of great ewe-flocks, small-seeds broadcast after charlock-harrowing had a chance of growth: but not in a soil nearly as infertile as brick. Matt's ideas came from the days of âOld Buck', days of good beer and good soil, both from the sheep's golden hoof.
During my absence in Devon the haystack made by the Duck Decoy has been covered with the rags of an old cloth not considered good enough for auction of the former tenant's effects: a cloth Matt had salvaged and hoarded for use one day. Why had this wretched, porous object been laid over the stack? The hay under it was spoiled. I ordered, just before I went awayâand also written it down in the farm diaryâthat that particular stack was to be thatched as quickly as possible. It stood low down, out of the waft of drying winds, beside the water of the Decoy. But Matt had taken his rotten old relic of rotten Old Buck; and all the while the large green rot-proof canvas was lying idle in the hovel. Too much trouble to take the heavier cloth there? Why had Luke and Matt refused to use it? Its use had been demonstrated, and proved, twice.
Now the stack under its reach-me-down was a depressing sightâsixty pounds' worth of hay spoiled, in all probability. As I ploughed up and down the field, head bowed to windy slant of rain, I thought that I should have stayed to see that the cloth was over the stackâand open at the top as I had shown themâan awning to prevent gas from causing a sweat and rot of fermentation. Was Bernard Shaw right in his Preface to
Saint
Joan,
about ordinary people being terrified by, and hating, those who showed them up to themselves, thus trying to break, or remove, a former self-conception, or conceit? I am a fool always to have gone on the assumption that people are reasonable, open to reason; with my parents, sisters, Lucy's brotherâeverybody except those who have achieved, and thereby, are âfamous'. How far is this arrogance on my part? How wrong have I been, for two decades now, in thinking that nearly all the human minds about me have been at fault? Perhaps, as Tim Copleston declared, I do not understand men. The trouble is, as I see it, that most men do not understand themselves.
The Great Bustard field was twenty acres: ten were in barley, ten in wheat. When the rain ceased and the corn was dry again they cut the barley, next to the Squarehead 11 wheat standing in stook. The jattering binder stopped a score and more of times, as usual; and once again upon the Bad Lands the annual harvest duologue was audible.
| Tortoise: | Even if yew had bought this patent new, it would be stopping now and agen, yew'd find. |
| Hare: | Do tell me why. |
| Tortoise: | They always do do. |
| Hare: | But why do they always do? |
| Tortoise : (producing screw-hammer): Yew can't help a stoppage. | |
| Hare: | Why can't you help it? |
| Tortoise: | Because they always do do. |
| Hare (ears falling flat): Oh. | |
| Tortoise No. 2 | (intervening earnestly): Yew can't help a stoppage, guv'nor. 'Tis nature! |
| Hare (one ear up): | I think it is nature when reaping machines breed, and produce little suburban grass-cutters; but no longer nature when they stop. They are then fossils. |
| Tortoise No. 1 | (unperturbed by this nonsense, as he opens what he called his shut-knife): This patent has knocked down the harvest so far, and even yew who are all wire want sometimes to stop, don't yew? (Pokes dull iron with open shut-knife.) |
| Â | Hare (both ears up, and grinning): Ah, 'bor! |
| Tortoise No. 1: | Well then, 'tis nature to stop. |
| Hare: | You've a got-it, 'bor! |
| Tortoise No. 2: | Yew can't beat Nature, guv'nor! |
| Â Â Â Thereupon Tortoise No. 2, wearing rubber nee-boots in the August sunshine (having shot the hare dead by his final bolt) turns about and strides away, leaving Hare metaphorically recumbent with eyes rolling around heaven. | |
| Hare (Musing): | Oddly enough, the shut-knife, after a little prod, can overcome Nature, or inertia, and now dear old Albion Reaper-and-Binder is once more clattering around the field, all the thwacks and bangs on its paintless chain-cover apparently forgiven if not forgotten. |
But âNature never forgets and never forgives'. Hardly had we moved to the six acres below the searchlight encampment when the binder stopped for three hours despite screw-hammer, incantation,
shut-knife
and oil from a beer-bottle. When it started again, towards seven o'clock, I thought to leave well alone, and so covering Albion up, we went home.
Rain recurred in the night, and continued all the next day, a Friday, making cutting impossible. The men went to repair the wire fence
around Scalt Common, while I went on ploughing the Higher Brock. Saturday was fine, and we worked until 3.30 p.m., when rain stopped us with half of the Bustard barley set in rows of stooks. The men knocked off for the week-end. It rained heavily until 9 p.m., when I was forced to stop ploughing.
A little more than half of our corn harvest now remains to be cut. The rain at least will mellow the barley kernels, making them less steely, less hard and brittle, more floury. They will thus mature to what is called a good malting sample, for quick and uniform germination to the malting-house floor. Rain is good for them, up to a pointâthe point of chitting, or sprouting. Then they are dud.
I ploughed all through Sunday under heavy showers of rain. On Monday the weather cleared again, and my tension with it.
We started on the Bustard, throwing down, to dry, the stooksâeach of six sheaves leaning togetherâwhich we had set-up the previous Saturday afternoon. They lay in sunshine upon an excellent clover layer. Thousands of skirted corn dollies, with never a dock or thistle tucked in their girdles, lay prostrate and dumb, but lightly, upon a tall stubble left specially for them to rest upon, so that drying wind might pass through and over their bleaching hair. Their skirts were green with upreaching clover cut with those delicate legs of cornstalk. Their life is over; all play with the wind, whisper and sigh of bowing blond heads, foredone; all, all passes away with Albion's guillotine. Now the green of those skirts will wilt with the bowed bleached heads. My fancies, my longing for Melissa, give way before the thought that green clover in stack might heat and kill the germ in the barley kernels grown for malt and fine ale.
When it rained again I asked Luke and Boy Billy to horse-hoe between the rows of roots of Lower Brock, which was rather like shoeing a dead horse. But the low overcast showed rifts of blue, the rain belt was passing.
At last, after two days of drying winds, they could start to carry. First, oats from the Scalt. They had been cut about a month. Rain had fallen every day since St. Swithin's Day. Some of the oat-sheaves had sprouted. Otherwise it was a good yield, estimated at twenty sacks an acre by Tortoise, who invariably over-estimated a crop, maybe to please Hare, maybe in age-long self-justification. Hare said eighteen sacks, but to himself thought sixteen; farmers invariably under-estimate, perhaps as a sort of mental insurance against calamity and loss. One never knew what was coming-in until one's corn was âthreshed out, cashed out'.
