The Elderbrook Brothers (22 page)

‘Oh, and, Miss Morgan!'

‘Yes
, Mr Elderbrook!' Surprising with how many different shades of emphasis she could vary that oft-repeated formula.

‘Ring up Mr George Rawlinson's office, Rawlinson & Beck-with, and confirm that he's lunching with me today.'

‘Yes, Mr Elderbrook. I have it in the diary.'

‘Good!'

He gave her a brief kind smile, carefully selected from stock. She went back to her typewriter in a state of innocent rapture, resolving that never, never, would she make a single mistake in Mr Elderbrook's letters. She would punctually renew the ribbon, thoroughly clean the machine at least twice a week, and look up every hard word in her little pocket dictionary. Greater love hath no typist than this.

Guy got out of his swivel-chair and opened the door that communicated with his partner's room.

‘Morning, Jimmie!'

‘Good morning,' said Talavera. ‘So it's you, is it?'

‘Who else?' said Guy gaily. He saw at a glance that Jimmie was under the weather. ‘Another thick head?' he inquired.

If Guy had not been already an abstainer from whisky, Jimmie Talavera's example would have made him so.

‘Nothing of the sort,' said Jimmie. ‘Look here, old boy. About this Nesfield Park holding.'

‘Yes. What about it?'

‘It's time we sold.'

‘I don't agree with you, Jimmie.'

‘We can get a handsome profit.'

‘If we hang on we can get a handsomer.'

‘It's money lying idle,' Jimmie grumbled. ‘If we wait too long … we don't want to burn our fingers.'

‘My dear Mr Budd, you surprise me. You do really.'

In facetious moments Guy called his partner Mr Budd, because it teased him, and because it was his name, Talavera being a nom de guerre which Nora had found for him in a school history-book. Sometimes the sally won a shy, wry smile. Today it did not.

‘We can't wait for ever for that damned bus-route,' said Jimmie morosely. ‘It's my belief we were misinformed about that.'

‘Maybe we were, maybe we weren't,' said Guy, with the air of a man resolved to be fair at all costs. ‘But I've got something better than buses up my sleeve. A railway extension, Jimmie. A new station. How's that?'

‘Another rumour? I don't want to throw cold water, old boy——'

‘No, water's not much in your line, is it, Jimmie?'

He smiled at Jimmie with charming boyish candour. It was a smile nicely calculated to tip the balance in favour of Jimmie's taking the impudence goodhumouredly instead of being hurt and offended..

An answering grin rewarded him. ‘Fact is, Guy, I'm two double whiskies below par this morning. Tell me about this precious station.'

‘Precious is right. They want it and we've got it.'

‘How's that?'

‘Don't you see? We're there first. We're in the way. And so …'

Real estate was only one of the commodities in which Elderbrook & Talavera dealt. It was little more than a profitable sideline. There was indeed scarcely anything they would not buy, from coal to sewing-machines, from pepper to granite quarries, provided they had a reasonable assurance of getting
rid of it at a big profit. Their business was complex enough in its details, and called for expert handling and a good deal of technical and out-of-the-way knowledge; but all their dealings were variations, more or less elaborate, on a single simple theme or pattern. To discover what your neighbour wants or will want, and then prevent his getting it, except at your price: that is the road to greatness and power and public applause.

JOE had not been quite himself since Emily's death. Instead of the old flashes of brief anger he had fits of moroseness, when he would move from room to room, aimlessly, like a sick dog. But he still found a dumb satisfaction in doing, or seeing done, the work of the farm: so long as that went on, and he with if, he could go to bed tired and sleep his six hours and be up again long before daylight. And what he did his household must do: he could not bear that anyone in the house should be awake when he was sleeping, or sleeping when he was awake. Matthew, with all his patience, was too old to suffer such restraints gladly; but suffer them he did, rather than quarrel with the old man; and Nancy, with a shrug, took her cue from Matthew. Brother and sister, with scarce a word said, conspired to humour their father. Apart from their sense of his age and loneliness, there was enough of the child left in each of them to make rebellion distasteful. Unaware of the reasons, as they too were, Joe took their obedience for granted. Had he imagined the children to be sorry for him he would have felt himself diminished and affronted. He was not sorry for himself: all that can be said is that he was somewhat often out of humour, consumed with a useless anger about things done and things left undone in that long past he had shared with Emily: once or twice, and they were bitter moments, he had caught a brief glimpse of himself from her angle, though not (it would have spared him much) through her eyes. What he could not
abide was to sit doing nothing, alone with his thoughts or exchanging small talk with his family. Reading, in Joe's view, was doing nothing, unless it were reading the newspaper or one of the farming weeklies: the sight of Matthew with his ‘nose in a story-book' only exacerbated his restlessness, so that he must fidget, interrupt, start an argument, find the boy a job, and if these devices failed fling open the door of the grandfather clock and begin noisily winding it, a broad hint that it was everybody's bedtime. This last trick, however, had to be played with circumspection; for not even Joe could send a grown-up son to bed in the middle of the evening. Father or no father, Matthew would not budge till nine o'clock had struck. And that in winter months only: in the high summer, and during harvest, he was still working in the fields at that hour.

Ranking high among the interests that still attached Joe to the earth was his pedigree herd of Longhorns. Mercestershire Longhorns had flourished in his grandfather's day, but a generation later they were seldom to be seen. Now they had come into their own again; there were twenty to thirty herds of them scattered about the county, but none, in Joe's estimation, better than his, and no individual among them the equal of his young bull, Marden Prince. Sired by Faircross True out of Marden Lady, and born here on the farm two years ago (you could find it all in Joe's herd-register, the only piece of writing he ever took pleasure in), the Prince, like all his breed, was a beast of character, blending in his massive person a mildness that was almost bland with a vigour that would have terrified a master less experienced than Joe. He chafed at the confinement of his cot, as what animal of spirit would not? But with his big bare sloping brow, his small ears set low under long drooping horns, his endearing unlikeness to your everyday cattle, he had, you could not deny it, an air of exceptional benignity. Some said of his breed in general that its build was clumsy: Joe would not have it so. Those long horns were decidedly in the way when it came to transporting such cattle by road or rail; but Joe, for once more romantic than practical,
did not wish them shorter. The Prince was his favourite, his foster-child: he took an almost personal pride in the young fellow's stalwart performance of the duties assigned to him.

Some distillation of such thoughts was in Joe's mind, this autumn morning in 1912, as he stamped his way across the cobbled yard to the stall—or cot, as they called it—where Marden Prince reluctantly spent his nights and days. Castration or imprisonment, for a bull-calf there is no third possible destiny, except the slaughterhouse. The cow called Starbrow was due to be served again: she was at this moment browsing quietly, and alone, in a plat of rough grass near the house, on the far side. Intent on his business though he was, Joe savoured a wintry tang in the air, and liked it. It brought him the scent of a new-made morning and a sense-reminiscence, uncomplicated by thought, by remembering or imagining, of uncounted other autumns and winters, moments the more fresh for having passed unnoticed and remained unremembered, and now chiming together in the octaves of his long history. The air braced him; the cobblestones gave him firm ground; but the sunlight was a little too sharp for him, so that his dark-bright eyes became mere splinters of energy, gleaming in a creased, leathery face.

He unbarred the door of the cot, pulled it open, and went in.

Here was a dimmer light and a warmer smell, pungent and good. The bull's broad buttocks almost barred the way in. Joe gave him a friendly smack and pushed along to his head.

‘Hullo, my sonny!' Joe placed a flat palm on the Prince's head.

The great beast stirred. It was like a ship at anchor moving slowly with the wash of the water. He stamped a foot, once, twice, three times, as if in answer. He lunged forward a pace. But his head, though but loosely held, by a steel halter made fast to an iron ring, did not move.

‘Courting days again, look,' said Joe, with a couple of vigorous pats. He set about releasing the bull's head from the chain. ‘Come along then, there's a good ‘un!'

Attached by a ring to the bull's nose was a short stick, seizing which, Joe persuaded him to turn round, intending to lead him straight out into the yard. But the Prince was in a playful mood. He made but a half circle, and before Joe knew what was happening he found himself being pushed against the wall by that vast velvet head.

‘Come round! Get away!' said Joe.

At first softly. Then louder. Then in an angry shout. He might have saved his breath, for indeed he was presently to need it. His protests made no impression and he had lost control of the animal. That stick served well enough as a leading rein; but when it came to pushing you might just as well have pushed against the side of a house, for all the effect it had. The Prince gave no ground, not the fraction of an inch. There was no malice in him: only a bit of friendly mischief. It was fun to be pinning his master against the wall, and the more he pushed the better he liked it.

Time took on a vivid nightmare quality, an intolerable slowness. Every moment, slowly squeezed into being, was big with portent. Breathless, his ribs cracking, Joe was too deeply hurt in his pride to be able to think quickly what was best to do. After all his years of handling cattle, to be cornered like this in his own yard! He was past shouting now: his open mouth could emit nothing but gasps. But suddenly, with a last frenzied effort, the fingers of his free hand (the other clung uselessly to the leading stick) found the bull's left eye. He reared back, with a snort and a bellow, and with a quick jerk of the stick Joe brought his head round to the doorway. At once he realized his mistake. It would have been more prudent to turn him the other way, and fasten him up again, to be tackled again later, after both had had a rest. But there had been no time for that degree of prudence, and moreover the impetus of Joe's original intention was still strong in him, against all cautionary counsels. Faced now with the full sunlight, the bull stood swaying and snorting, a mountain of combustible energy. The pain of his eye already forgotten,
he stamped tentatively on the hard ground, as if uncertain what to do next. He was not seriously ruffled; his good temper persisted; and luckily neither he nor Joe thought to ask himself who now was in control of whom. And if the bull bore no malice, neither did Joe. Joe could on occasion be rough with his animals, rougher than ever Matthew was; nor was he philosophically inclined; but in his dealings with animals he was an inflexibly just man; treating them as innocents, he had never taken revenge on any one of them for injuries or misdemeanours. The Prince had come near to killing him, not in malice but rather from an excess of friendly high spirits. This Joe knew without even thinking about it: in his commerce with men and women he was not always so sagacious.

Man and bull, they stamped out into the yard. Liking the Prince none the less for his escapade, Joe was still utterly resolved to have his own way. He was too busy to pay attention to the pain in his body, or to ask himself if he were badly hurt. That he had difficulty in standing on his feet made him merely impatient. The only concession his wilfulness would make was to let Marden Prince set the pace, which that young fellow did, and would have done with or without leave, lowering his great head and moving slowly forward in a series of jerks, zigzag fashion. Matthew, crossing the yard at that moment, stopped to stare at the astonishing sight of his father in manifest difficulty. Joe in his old age was still a straight, upstanding man; but now he was bent nearly double, having found, without giving it conscious thought, that he could best endure his pain in that posture.

Matthew came running up. ‘Let me take him, Dad!'

‘Go to the devil, boy! I'm taking him, a'n't I? Kimmup, Prince. Steady now, master.'

Yet another discovery. Speech was painful to him. But he failed to notice what Matthew noticed: that his voice, even in anger, even in command, was not much above a rasping whisper. As for Matthew, he dared not interfere. He knew and guessed
nothing of what had happened; but he saw his father's condition, and knowing him he knew in a flash two things, that Joe would forcibly resist any attempt to take the bull from him, and that only his stubborn absorption in the present task was saving him from collapse. So Matthew could do nothing, except watch, and follow, and be ready for anything. He saw with satisfaction that the gate into the orchard was already open.

Down the yard, along the orchard edge, and so round to the small enclosure where Starcross waited, all unconscious of her destiny. There the procession came to a halt.

‘Run along then,' Joe said, and dropped the leading stick.

Matthew made to move towards the cow's head, but Joe, straightening himself with a grunt, caught at his son's arm for support. Standing so, leaning so, he watched his cow served and was content.

‘I think I'll lie down for a bit, son. Take him back along, will ye?'