The Pandervils (44 page)

‘Hullo, farmer!' said Egg. ‘I'm up first, you see.'

Egg was in high spirits: unnaturally high spirits, thought Nicky, for so early in the morning. He hoped he wouldn't over-excite himself, and the implied fear found its justification soon enough in the feverish gleam that lit the old man's eye as he sat back in the cab watching the hedges fly past. Nicky was excited, too, though not for quite the same reasons as Egg had.

Being on the point of making dangerous conversation, he felt almost breathless with stage-fright. Yet his voice sounded sufficiently cool when at last he began: ‘Do you remember Upridge?'

‘Eh? Upridge?' Egg looked blankly, but wouldn't admit ignorance of anything in Mershire. ‘Yes, I remember. Let me see …' His tactics were successful; having gained time he now did indeed remember that there had been a village of that name somewhere on the fringe of his boyhood's world. ‘You mean the village?'

What else was there to mean? There was only one Upridge and that a village. Nicky saw through his father's deception. Poor old Dad, he's forgotten. ‘Yes. Jolly little village. Quite near Crabbe's place, you know. I sometimes went over
there to church on Sunday evenings.'

‘Went to church, did you? Yes, I remember you saying in one of your letters about going to church. Well I used to go to church myself in the old days at the Ridge. It was y'r poor mother got me into the chapel. Y'r granddad Pandervil would no more a thought of going inside a chapel than of making his own bed.'

Nicky nodded appreciation. ‘I don't blame him. Do you?'

‘Me and y'r uncles used to take it by turns. When we could be spared, for there's always something to be doing on a farm, off we'd go with Flisher or Sarah to church. The Guv'nor dint go but on special days. He stayed at home and shut himself up with his books. A rare one for books, and a head for 'em too. I sometimes fancy you're a bit like him, Nicky. He'd have thought the world of you, my boy. Moren he ever did of us lot.' Egg shone with pride in being so richly excelled by his son.

Upridge seemed forgotten, but Nicky took care to come back to it. ‘I met some people at Upridge. Church people. At least they go to church now and again. I think the mother comes of Quaker stock.'

‘What sort of folks are they? You dint tell me you'd met anybody new, as I can remember.'

‘Their name's Marsh.' Nicky was already wishing he hadn't begun this difficult story.

‘Young fellow like yourself, I spose? Is he a farmer too?'

‘There aren't any men. Sort of hen party.' Nicky contrived to laugh. ‘Just mother and daughter living by themselves.'

‘H'm!' Egg waited to hear more.

‘Quite nice people,' said Nicky. ‘Been very decent to me.'

‘How did you meet 'em?'

‘Oh, I just met them. Sort of got to know the daughter.' He tried to make the talk more general. ‘Funny how you meet people, isn't it. A chance word or two and so on.' Egg gravely agreed, his heart warm; and Nicky, encouraged by his gravity, could not forbear telling him: ‘There were some birds nesting in the wall of the old church, the ruined one. And we got into conversation about it.'

‘You and Mrs Marsh. I see,' said Egg innocently, with hardly a smile.

‘Not Mrs Marsh. Her daughter it was. Jane, they call her.'

A good name that, thought Egg. Jane Marsh: a good honest name. ‘Sounds a pleasant body, this Jane.'

‘She is,' agreed Nicky: not with enthusiasm, but rather with the air of one determined to be just. ‘Oh, quite pleasant. And quite young. A child almost. Only just twenty, I think they said.'

‘She'll be pretty, I dare say,' ventured Egg.

‘In a way,' Nicky agreed. ‘Pretty's not exactly the word. But good-looking, yes. You might almost say beautiful.'

‘Tall, I expect?' suggested Egg.

‘Yes, tall and sort of fine-looking.' He was warming to his theme. ‘The kind of face a sculptor would be attracted to. A sculptor rather than a painter, if you know what I mean. There's something very open and generous about it, and yet … oh, I dunno. What I was going to say was they've been pretty decent to me, asked me to tea and sort of took an interest, lonely young man and all that. I thought it might be the polite thing if we were to run them over to see this farm of ours.'

Egg was taken aback for a moment. ‘What, this morning?'

‘Oh, not if you'd rather not. I could tell the driver to turn at the toll-gate and take a short cut through Winsted Rising. But it was only a passing thought of mine. We'll not bother now.'

After a silence Egg said suddenly: ‘I like the sound of that young woman. Jane, d'ye call her? Tell me more about her, won't you?'

‘Told all I know,' said Nicky.

‘You said she was tall, didn't you?'

‘Tallish.' Nicky stared out of the window. ‘Toll gates,' he remarked, desperate to say something.

‘About five foot six?' asked Egg with a twinkle.

‘Oh, about that, I spose.'

‘And lots of black hair, dint you say? And pulls it straight back from her forehead and does it in a little bun at the back. Eh?'

Nicky blushed in meeting his father's glance.

‘Now how the dickens did you know that, Dad?' he asked, though he knew well enough.

‘Never you mind!' said Egg. ‘Have I got it right?'

‘Near enough. But how-!' He still had to pretend.

Egg jumped up, put his head out of the window, and shouted to the driver. The car stopped. ‘D'you know Upridge, young man? Well, you'll have to turn and go back a step or two. Back to the toll-gate, d'ye see? … And then take the road through Winsted Rising.'

‘But I say!' Nicky took alarm, seeing his plan put so unexpectedly into effect. ‘Do you think we'd better? It's another twenty miles pretty near. And she's—they're not expecting me. They may be out.'

All the way to Upridge Nicky was restless and preoccupied, hardly answering when spoken to. Egg, stealthily watching him, suffered and rejoiced. He did not for many minutes share his son's anxiety, for the years had not taught him pessimism, and seeing that Nicky was in love with this Jane he had no doubt at all that he would win her. His only fear, which he dared not boldly face, was that she should bring trouble to her lover; and when she alone, and not her mother, was handed into the cab—for it all fell out as Nicky had recklessly planned—she was so touchingly shy, and Nicky so awkward and so radiant, that Egg hadn't the heart to take careful stock of her. He thought on the whole he liked her looks, but now,
the prospect of seeing the Ridge Farm being so near, he was glad enough to absent himself in spirit for a while from these young people, who looked as eagerly forward as he looked wistfully back, and to indulge his many memories.

The car began climbing Saffron Ridge, and a quietness enclosed him into which the voices of his companions could not penetrate; but, when the time came for him to get out, nothing was left in him but an expectant curiosity. It was all so long ago, that past in which he had been living for a strange hour or so, that he could not identify himself, as yet, with the young fellow he remembered; it was easier far to identify himself with Nicky, in whose life his own was so marvellously and at times sensibly extended. Yet entering the farmhouse kitchen, he was startled almost into asking ‘Where's Mother?' And, going to the window, from which the cobbled yard was visible, he stood gazing and forgetful at his vanished boyhood, scarcely rousing when Nicky said: ‘Sit down for a bit, Dad. I'll show Jane the rest of the house while you're resting.' There was sunlight in the yard, and Egg, unfastening the window with fingers that remembered even more than he did, stretched out his hands towards it. He leaned out, slantwise, to get a glimpse of the dairy, of which the door stood half-open: a sight that kept him staring for a long while, longer than he knew, till at last he caught himself expecting to see his young sister, Felicia, come out of that dairy carrying an empty pail hung from her arm and screwing up her
eyes in the strong sunlight. That barn's new. Spoils the place, that barn does. There was no one in the yard: it was deserted; no life except the life his memory peopled it with. His eyes saw what they saw, but into his mind crowded the fields beyond, the cart-track between two high hedges, the orchard, the twelve-acre plough, the green valley, and the long slope to the field they had called Flinders; and he was again with his brothers, ploughing, scything, trimming hedges, loading hay. It was strange, marvellous, and at the last unbelievable, that that had once been real, a living present reality, and now was nothing but an old tale. …

He turned at a sound in the room behind him, and, seeing a young man and a young woman come smiling towards him he made as if to cover his eyes with his hand, as though fending off the intrusion.

‘Hullo, Dad! Sorry we were so long away.' Nicky stared anxiously, ‘Not feeling bad, are you?'

His son's voice recalled him. ‘No, no, my boy. I'm right enough.' He noticed that the boy and the girl were hand in hand, and he guessed them to be full of their tremendous secret. He smiled, looking from one to the other.

The two came nearer. ‘Jane and I—' said Nicky, and no more words would come.

‘That's a good boy!' Egg gave them each a trembling hand. He was proud and glad. But when his glance came to rest at last on Jane, whom
pride and gladness had transfigured, his eyes dimmed and the pain of unbearable beauty shot through his heart. All the years of his life were distilled into one sweet, one bitter drop. I must get away, I can't bear any more of it. He longed to be safe back in his shop at Farringay.

Pansy, the most ladylike of cows, had sprained her leg and was suffering. She stood in the near orchard meekly enduring the attentions of her two masters. ‘Come along, my beauty!' said old Egg Pandervil; and gently, but with a secret rapture of which his son Nicky was more than half-aware, he applied a handful of yellow ointment to the swollen joint and began rubbing it in. ‘You're a wonder, Dad!' But it did not need Nicky's remark, which he cunningly pretended not to hear, to make Egg happy, for nowadays everything was conspiring to his happiness. He was in Mershire; his son was a farmer, and he was the father of his son: that was enough. After half a century of exile he was back where he belonged, living on the very soil he had himself farmed as a lad, and moving among sounds and smells and beasts that were like the incidents of an old beloved story miraculously made actual. And it gave him profound satisfaction to know himself—despite the variety of new habits learned during that exile— still countryman enough, and farmer enough, to do
more for Pansy than ever that smart young vet at Mercester could have done. Nothing to do but put the poor creature out of its pain—that, he told Nicky, was what they all said, and that was what this fellow would say if he were given a chance. ‘Steady, my lass!' murmured Egg. ‘I'm making it well again, that's what I'm doing.' Continuing the massage, he rested his head gratefully against the cow's flank. The smell of the animal was pleasant in his nostrils; her solid bulk reassured him; he was home again. Moreover, the cow was getting better, thereby affording one more piece of corroborative evidence that he hadn't lost his country nous. On days when strength assailed him he could plough as straight a furrow, build as fine a stack, and with bottle and shears as dexterously tend a maggoty sheep as young Nicky himself could. He would draw water from the deep well with never a sick glance—such as Nicky couldn't forbear giving—into that hideous hole; he would tar a fence with the enthusiasm of a child; and nothing pleased him better, in those early days, than to take a scythe and mow down a few of the thistles that disgracefully choked the valley meadow. At seventy-five his strength wasn't what it had been; but, though he could not do everything, he could do enough to feel that he was of some use to the place. He was forever poking about the farm at Nicky's side, helping, advising, hindering maybe, with his ‘Here, lemme have a go, Nicky!' and ‘Now this is the way 'twas done in
my
time.' Nicky, admiring and teasing the old man in the
same breath, divined at last the secret of this strange zest of his: it was that every fresh task yielded him not only proof of his capacity but the bitter-sweet delight of reminiscence. What Nicky could not know was the exact proportions in which were mixed the fancies, the feelings, and the history of which this reminiscence was compounded. More often than not there was no conscious memory of the past, but only a flavour, subtle and satisfying; though sometimes, with a bill-hook in his hand, or squatted in the byre and watching the milk warm from the udder spurt resonantly into the pail, Egg did play at pretending he was back for an instant in the past. Yet he was aware—now and again, but not often, mournfully aware—that the essential quality of that past eluded him. Everything looked the same, or nearly so; but everything was different. It was nothing—or at least it was no more than a little disconcerting—that where men in his time had mowed grass with a scythe and reaped corn with a sickle they now used a machine drawn by horses; and nothing—except an occasion for genial sneering—that chemical manures were the fashion, and the rotation of crops a solemnly deliberated affair. The difference went deeper than that; it was in the very nature of things. Or was it, perhaps, in himself alone? Yet he did not think of himself as old, and it was sometimes the queerest thing to realize what a great gulf of years divided him from Nicky and Jane, and he caught himself wondering how and why he came to be pent in this old body, he and
his rich treasure of memories. This new life bred strange thoughts, and none more strange than the fancy, only half playful, that his marriage and his life at Farringay were things that had never really happened. Yes, they had happened, but not so truly as things happened here on the farm; too real for a dream, maybe, but surely not real enough for full, waking life. Boyhood itself seemed less remote than that lifetime of grocering.