The Farm by the Lake

Chapter 11

Flo felt sorry for Mr. Nadin. However Mrs. Nadin stormed he so seldom answered back. He was not exactly meek, but he absorbed everything that she said with a kind of independent resignation. If Mrs. Nadin was upstairs or in the outhouses and Mr. Nadin came in late for his afternoon cup of tea, Dot sometimes would say:

“If you can’t come in to time, you deserve to do without.”

“Keep your lip to yourself,” he would answer quietly, but with unmistakable authority.

Flo liked it. But why didn’t he do the same to Mrs. Nadin?

The abandonment of Colonel was only one of many somewhat similar happenings. Flo soon got into the habit of trying to help the farmer all she could. She thought that he needed help; and more important to herself, though she did not admit it, she preferred working out-of-doors.

The boys did not do much. Bert was perfunctory towards farm work; Clem was lazy. The only thing that he liked was going off in the trap with Job. Where he went to most times Flo did not know; and she was often in bed when she heard the clatter of hooves and the rolling of the iron-tyred wheels. Then she would lie till she heard his stockinged tread and saw the yellow candle light in a broad bar beneath her door. She watched its brilliance rise up the side cracks, then grow dim and disappear as Clem went along the landing. Perhaps it was foolish, but she did not feel at ease till he had climbed the stairs and gone. There was no lock or bolt, and it would be so simple for him to walk in. Otherwise Flo soon got to like her room. It was the one place where she could get away effectively from Mrs. Nadin’s perpetual harsh talk; where she could feel that she had a little part of life still her own. There, in silence only faintly disturbed occasionally by the sleepy cheep of a sparrow under the stone-slated eaves, or the sly running of mice somewhere in the walls or beams, and in steady friendly candle light she wrote home. From there she tried to tell her mother what her new life was like:

Next morning Flo asked Dot where she could post the letter.

“What tales have you been telling?”

“Nothing,” said Flo.

“Bert’ll post it . . . if he can remember,” said Dot. She stood a moment hesitating, then walked to the fireplace.

Bert said, “Ay, I’ll non forget,” and slipped the envelope into his right-hand pocket. This was Flo’s second letter. She thought of Mrs. Mawson telling her to stick up for herself, and wondered whether asking about a half-day off would come under what her friend had meant. Only there was always so much to do that Flo did not like asking. But Mrs. Nadin might have been able to pick up her thoughts for on the second Thursday morning, while Flo was peeling potatoes, Mrs. Nadin said: “I reckon you’re like all the rest an’ want ta goo sky-larkin’ a bit?”

“How d’you mean?”

“Bit o’ time off a’ter the lads. There’ll be noo folk if there’s noo courtin’. When you’ve washed up, happen we’ll manage ’bout you after dinner.”

But it was three before Flo got upstairs to change. Only now that she was free she had no idea where to go. Her brief ride from the station through Moss had not left a very attractive memory. It seemed a long walk there if there was nothing more than she had already seen. She leaned on the window sill and looked across the valley to where on the hill were other farms, small and grey, each with its sheltering group of sycamores or ash trees. She got her father’s glasses, and these seemed to bring the farms closer, but that was all. In any of these farmhouses there might be a girl of her own age free for the afternoon, not knowing what to do. But how could they get to know each other? Was there no market where they could meet? Flo wondered. Why hadn’t she asked?

Anyway, she could dress in her best. There was no telling what might happen. So she started to change. She had to go down again to wash at the sink. There was no one in the kitchen, but as she was drying herself she heard Clem on the flags. She hid her shoulders with the towel, as a cape, and dashed for the door. He had just opened the outer door which she had shut. He grinned, and as she turned he caught the towel and gave it a tug. The corner nearest to him was dragged out of her clutch and fell down her back, but she ran on up the passage, hearing his laugh. After dressing she listened acutely, trying to decide whether he was still in the kitchen, but no sound came. She took a last look into the glass. Because she could not see the hem of her skirt she had to put the chair in front of the dressing-table and stand on it. She was satisfied and hoped that there would be someone nice to see her. She felt just as smart as the first time when she tried the costume on. She hadn’t had any money so far, but part of her things were paid for, anyway, and she wondered which part. She thought that it would be a good plan to decide each half-day, if she got them regular, what it was that she had worked for that week, and what she was going to work for in the next week. She decided that the first thing she would pay off would be the blouse, but how much of it was represented by the week—no, ten days—which she had already worked? Had she bought the front or the back, or only a sleeve, say? This was a problem she could not answer, and she frowned as she lifted her skirt to step down. She wished that she had been told how much each of the things had cost; all she knew was that Mrs. Howell had told her that she would have to work at least six months before she could expect to get more than a very little pocket-money. Flo frowned more as she thought going down the stairs. How nice it would be when she really began to earn and could send something home!

She was upset to find Clem leaning in the back doorway. He turned and said that if she was going into Moss he’d take her. He was going with the float.

“I’m not going into Moss; I’m going the other way,” said Flo.

She felt like turning back up the stairs, but she forced herself to walk on. As she stepped out he heaved his weight off the door post and went on with her.

“Got a date already, eh? You’ll get lost,”, he said in a teasing drawl.

She ignored him.

“Not coming?” he asked again, quizzingly, as they got to the float.

She walked on feeling annoyed and foolish. She heard him say, “She won’t have us, Job. We’re jilted!” The back of her neck burned with her cheeks, and she knew he must be able to see it under her turban and would be laughing. At the gate she turned abruptly rightward, but the wall was not high enough to hide her and she walked on stiffly, looking straight in front. The float rattled over the yard and she heard it craunch round in the lane. She was tempted to look back to make sure that it was going the other way, only she knew that Clem might still be watching. However, the sounds went fainter and she slowed to a saunter. The road went straight for a quarter mile, then disappeared to the left of some thorn bushes. She had not the least idea where it led. A hundred yards from the yard gate the wall on the right ended. She was past the house and the cabin and the hawthorns by which the boat-house was sheltered and unexpectedly she came to a wide open space and saw the lake broadspread. It was a mile long and half a mile across, and seen from there seemed to fill the valley. There was a gradual slope of coarse grass and scattered sedge tufts, then a strip of low-growing weeds of a kind that could survive periodic drownings, and finally an edge of clayey silt and stones. She walked down, drawn as a child would have been, and the nearer to the water she got the farther and wider the lake seemed to spread. A pleasant breeze was coming from the west down the length of the lake, raising little waves that splashed along the strand, tossing tiny beads of spray towards her shoes as if inviting her to play. It was so very like the sea that for a moment she imagined herself back on the coast at Aldingham, looking across Morecambe bay. The breeze blew away the hotness from her cheeks and seemed to cleanse her and she breathed in deeply, coolness spreading under her breasts, till she felt buoyant and wanted to run. She turned leftwards and started to walk briskly just out of reach of the breaking water. The sound was lifted to her; it was a gentle, friendly sounds friendly as the prattle of children. Fifty yards along the land went out in a curving sweep rightward. A brake of hawthorns, low-growing alders and bramble mounds hid her from the road, and she felt free and ran for twenty yards till she suddenly thought of Bert. Perhaps he was in the bushes somewhere. He always seemed to be somewhere near the lake. She stopped and looked round, but there was nothing, only the lapping water and the bushes and the sky. In front a ridge rose just high enough to hide everything beyond. This was the backbone of the point which formed the bay round which she was going. She went on to the tip of the point and looked into the west with the breeze, and the little waves flowing all round, as it seemed. The continual hurry of the waves gave her the impression of moving forward into them as in the prow of a boat. The sensation pleased her and she stood there five minutes, feeling pink coming into her cheeks. On her left behind the point the lake ended in a pear-shaped lagoon, three hundred yards long and at its widest part two hundred yards. Across to the opposite shore from where she stood was about one hundred and fifty yards, and she noticed what she thought was a curious thing. Far out the waves ran independently, tossing, slapping, and sometimes falling over one another, but as they approached the lagoon entrance there was an increasing orderliness; they went together inexplicably into continuous swells which moved into the opening in bow formation, each swell about two feet behind its forerunner. These swells or regular corrugations were higher than any of the individual waves farther out. The fore part of the bow passed into the lagoon first at the centre of the entrance, the ends of the swells lagging slightly along the shores. The swells had a brave look, as if they were determined to overwhelm everything, and then twenty yards within the lagoon they seemed to forget. They lost their robustness and became smaller and smaller, till forty yards past the point they were simply ripples which meekly smoothed themselves into the untroubled stillness of the far end. There Flo saw as the stalk of the lagoon pear a stream which came in between banks green with spring freshness. A quarter-mile away the little valley was shut in by a ridge grown with larches just beginning to tint, as if some of the dye of the grass had been taken up by their roots. The larches stood above the ridge against the sky, reminding Flo of pictures of the Canadian Rockies; but this was smaller, more friendly and pretty. Then she shortened her gaze to the left of the lagoon. Near where the stream came in the bank went up twenty feet or more, almost into a cliff, though all grass, topped with rough hawthorns and hollies. Flo’s gaze following the ridge hesitated all at once. There was something in the dark hollow under the cliff, something which at first she could not make out. Concentrating, she saw a man apparently sitting down, so that after all she had not been alone. She had been watched and she felt resentful; by his mere presence he had somehow spoiled the whole scene and experience. She turned, intending to walk to the road by the way that she had come. Her instinct was to ignore the stranger, but the narrowness of the point compelled her during the first twenty yards very nearly straight in his direction, and she could not close her eyes to him. He was waving, not in greeting, but signalling urgently with bent arm which he drew towards himself. She was struck by his otherwise static attitude. It seemed unnatural. On reaching the place where she should have gone down the ridge leftward out of his view she paused doubtfully. There was a slight lull in the rush of breeze, and a shout reached her, not as any particular word, but an appeal of some kind. What could he want?

The lagoon which had been friendly and pleasant seemed lonely now. It would be wiser to walk away and get on the public road. She half turned, then heard a more urgent shout. He beckoned again, and she began to walk slowly round the lagoon, intending to dodge into the bushes at any suspicious move. For the first part of the way the shore curve took her rather farther from him. Then the inlet of a stream five feet across made her seek round through the bushes. She scrambled up a mound and was diverted by sprawling brambles. When she saw the light of the open lakeside again she was closer to the stranger than she had expected. She stopped just in the hiding of a blackthorn shrub whose last flowers looked drab, as if they had mistaken their time of blooming. Unintentionally her left hand touched one of the sharp spikes. When she snatched it away a blood prick showed on the ball of the first finger. She raised her hand at the same time leaning forward. The finger never got to her mouth, for what she saw made her start impulsively from cover. The fall of the ground helped her into a run, and she went with the wind, nearly as fast, so that it felt no longer fresh but warm with her. Soon she was under the beginning of the grassy cliff.

“Careful!” came a warning shout. She slowed to walking pace and studied him as she advanced. The chair, of brown basketing, was near the centre of an oval flat between cliff and shore, and the rims of the wheels were four inches under the clayey surface. The man appeared young, about twenty-five, Flo guessed, and had a sallow rectangular face and towsled hair, dark peat colour. He sat very broad in the chair facing her and smiled disparagingly. “Better not come any closer,” he advised gruffly when she was at the edge of the flat, and still twenty paces off. “If you’d go and fetch Bert . . . Bert Nadin . . . though, I’d be glad.”

“Why . . . can’t I help?” Flo asked, breathing fast.

“You’ll mucky yourself to blazes,” he said, his voice very deep with a kind of caressing quality, his eyes going down momentarily to her shoes. “I ought to have had more sense, the number of times I’ve been . . . but I thought it looked all right.” He held up his hands, palms towards her. Brown mud blotched them all over. “That’s what you’ll get if you come.”

His legs looked shrunken. They gave her a feeling of horror, coupled with a more powerful feeling of pity. Without considering what he had said she stepped forward impulsively on to the bare brown patch. Instantly her heel went in. Just under the apparently dry surface there was a layer of nearly liquid mud. She slipped and precariously recovered. She held her legs stiffly as if she was on ice.

“I told you; you should go for Bert,” he said sympathetically.

But it was absurd to go back when he was so short a distance away. She did not reply, but went on again gingerly.

“I doubt whether you’ll be able to do it; it’s like glue,” he said, as she put her hands on the chair back. It was a quiet comment in which she felt that he also expressed thanks, His towsled hair was just below her. There was a faint golden gloss in the depth of the brownness.

“Which way,” he asked, “on or back? Which can you manage best?”

“Push, I think.”

“You’ll probably manage pulling better,” he suggested, though not insisting.

“Push,” she ordered and put her weight against the handle. His hands closed broadly on the wooden hand-wheels which were outside the ordinary wheels and of a somewhat smaller circumference. The chair moved a little. Flo strained against it. Unexpectedly both her feet slipped and she held on to save herself.

“We’re digging in; better try backward,” he advised. “You shouldn’t . . .”

“I don’t know whether I can stand backward,” she said, laughing rather uncertainly.

“If I come over on you, you’ll know about it,” he said, laughing also, but in a way that calmed her. “I’ve been in this mess before; it’s not as simple as it looks.”

“It’s only about a couple of yards this way,” she said hopefully, looking if there was more solid footing anywhere. A stone as big as her fist attracted her and she set her sole against it testingly, but after very slight pressure it skidded, leaving a greasy trail. “What horrid stuff,” she exclaimed.

“Yes; you shouldn’t have bothered,” he said at once with regret, taking all blame. “I shouldn’t have waved, only I must have been here an hour.”

“An hour! Try again,” she ordered, resuming charge.

He leaned and gripped the hand-wheels low down. Flo turned partly sideways to get the purchase of the full length of her shoes. The wheels made a quarter turn reluctantly. All at once she felt the weight of the chair towards her increase alarmingly. With a violent effort she threw it back. It poised for a moment, on balance, then fell to normal.

“I thought it was a gonner,” he said quietly and chuckled; but Flo trembled. “It’s always liable to tip. You should pull on the lower handle; it’s more awkward, but it’s best,” he said as though apologizing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking down on him.

They tried again. When they pulled together the wheels turned slowly and crept back. When he leaned to shift his grip the chair felt immovable. She got into waiting and pulling with him. As they got farther back the ground was drier, and at last she could move the chair unaided. The wheels ran on to a patch of dwarfed weed. She stopped, realizing that she did not know now in which direction he wanted to go. Immediately he manipulated adroitly round to face her.

“Look at your shoes; too bad,” he said. There was grave politeness and a genuineness that pleased her. “I thought you weren’t going to come, though. I waved and waved and shouted . . .”

“It must have been the wind and the water; I never heard,” she explained, wondering whether she ought to leave him, yet not wanting to. “Which way?”

“No; you’ve done enough. I’ll take more care, thanks. I should have had more sense, anyway.”

He looked again at her shoes and asked if she had far to go.

“Only there,” she nodded in the direction of the farm.

“Prettyfield! How is it I’ve never seen you?” he asked. “I’m one of Bert’s regulars.”

“I’ve only just come. It’s the first time I’ve been by the water.”

“It’s a great place, don’t you think?” His glance circled slowly and appreciatively. While his attention was away she looked quickly at his square chin which held an unusual V-shaped dimple, in which short dark hairs sprouted. His brows were thick and met, making a straight black bar under the high forehead. His eyes came back and caught her scrutiny. Hastily she looked over his head, down the water There was silence, ended by his unhurried, husky speech. “I don’t know what I’d do without here to come to. Do you fish?”

“No,” she answered. “It always seems so . . . so slow. If you ever caught anything . . .”

“That shows . . . It isn’t what you catch, it’s the doing that matters . . . like with so many other things. So long as I’m here, I don’t mind. I like to be by the water and to see the hills.”

“Yes,” said Flo, liking his voice.

“Things get on top of you, sometimes, you know. That’s when I get away here, if I can. I’d only just put my rod up.” He let his right hand fall on the brown canvas cover tucked by his side. “I haven’t caught anything to-day . . . got caught myself instead, eh?”

“If I’d kept on the road you’d still be there,” said Flo. He smiled agreement, and she began to wipe her shoes on the weed. To get the thick of the mud off he offered a knife with a handle of brown corrugated horn and a worn blade. She crouched and scraped awkwardly, knowing his steady watching.

“Put it here,” he invited, touching the edge of the footrest. “My hands are as doesn’t matter; and it’s my fault.”

“I can manage,” she answered.

“You won’t let me pay you back anyway?”

“It was nothing. I thought I’d go all round. Is there a way?”

“Yes,” he said, willingly. “I’d show you, but I only get along this side . . . and not always that.” He smiled ruefully. “But if you go far enough there’s a bridge.” He pointed towards the larches and let his arm circle, indicating the opposite woods and the far end of the lake in turn. “And back by the main road.”

Flo wiped the knife. As she gave it to him she was struck by the paleness of the inside of his hand in contrast with the brown back. She wondered what he did; if he worked at all.

“Sure you can manage? Suppose you sink again?” she asked.

“I won’t. Once bitten, twice shy . . . like a fish. Once it’s escaped, he’ll be a good man to catch it again.” He paused and turned the chair towards the water. “You see where I came; should have kept nearer the edge. There must be a spring under that patch.”

“If you’ll be all right then . . .”

“Ever so many thanks again. Tell Bert you’ve been talking to Dick Goldbourn.”

“Yes,” said Flo. She hesitated before starting to walk across the remainder of the flat. Then there was a bank. From the top she looked back. Dick Goldbourn had not moved. He waved and impelled her to wave an answer. She wondered if he had always been like that and felt sorry for him. There was just the suggestion of a path in front. It took her up the shallow valley by the stream that was the stalk of the lagoon. Fifty yards from the head of the lagoon there were alders and willows by the water and the path went to a narrow wooden bridge beneath them. Bending rightward the path then led back towards the lake, but took her a good stone-throw away from the stream and higher up, and here, surprisingly, she found a second stream, clearer, quicker-flowing, man-guided, though the banks had long ago become grown with grass and flowering plants, thorn bushes and occasional goat willows, ash trees and small oaks. This stream’s remaining mark of artificiality was its straightness. Flo did not bother trying to think why it had been made, because there was a sudden circled disturbance of the surface and the skimming away of a shadow which she guessed must be a fish. Although she peered hard under the far bank where it seemed to have gone, all that she saw was a little flurry of fine particles start up and float away. She wondered if it was the kind offish that Mr. Goldbourn would have liked to have caught. She looked round. There he was half a mile distant close by the lake edge, resting as it seemed. Realizing that she was still in his view should he glance round, she went on more quickly to the wood’s shelter. The clear stream ran into the wood under a thick ash bough, recently barked and creamy white. The stile was high and let Flo down behind a family of old hollies, all grown together as with arms and cloaks round one another. Here the path was a narrow causeway between spinney leaves and the water. She sidled past, her back to the hollies, and noticed how the water, overarched also by alder trees from the far side, seemed to run more gently, as if it had grown older all at once. Shadow had taken away the surface gloss so that she could see every grey and brown and black pebble, and every stick and rooting of moss or weed as if she were looking through a magnifying glass. Beyond the hollies stream and path went companionably down a long clear corridor interlaced above, and at the sides shut in by ivied oak trunks and thorn bushes, by hazel and wild rose shoots tied with dead-looking honeysuckle binders which nevertheless had started proud little sage-green leaf tufts at hand-span intervals all along their length. On the right by the edge of the path the ground fell steeply, and Flo saw through boughs and twigs the gleam of the lake. Behind an ivy-muffled oak trunk she stopped. Dick Goldbourn was moving on. He seemed absorbed in picking a track, and went on slowly as if the obstructions to the wheels were many. Flo felt contrite at not having stayed. She left the path, scrambling down the bank, and went to the edge of the bushes. The water lay only five feet from them. There was a sense of intimacy in watching him across its surface, for she was by the top end of the lagoon where the swell was down to little more than a suggestion of shadows following one another. Though she could hear the wind, it was only a faint soughing at the back of the wood behind her, and she imagined that without raising her voice she could have spoken across to him. She forgot regret in trying to remember all that had happened. More than anything she had been impressed by his quiet courtesy. “A real gentleman,” she summed him up.

He was wheeling carefully up the land that dwindled to the point where she had stood. He was taking the rise diagonally and half-way up changed direction, unexpectedly facing partly to her. She stepped back flustered, and wrongly imagined the shelter of the hastily accepted thorn bush to be very slight. He paused and seemed to gaze straight at her. She wondered at her foolishness in coming so near the edge. While she hesitated between stopping there or making a dash for the oak he began to labour again and rolled slowly up the bank on his new tack. Then he was at the top, and she saw him coast from view. Nevertheless she stayed on, knowing that he must show again as he travelled to the road. Only when he was safely on the macadam did she climb back to the path. He was still in her thoughts when she reached the dam at the foot of the lake.