The Farm by the Lake

Chapter 5

The bay horse was of the serviceable type, half-legged, and the trap matched; it could obviously have been used just as well for carrying milk churns or sacks of flour as for its present purpose. It was black with a single yellow line round the wheel rims, and it was clean. Only Flo did not notice these things, because as the horse plodded up the last of the slope her attention was all on the driver. When the wheels ground on to the flat he lifted his elbows off his knees and threw a single encouraging click! to the horse. He appeared to be of medium height; perhaps thirty, though Flo was a poor judge of those older than herself. He tipped his cap brim a bit higher and said to the porter:

“By gum, you look busy.”

“You’ve kept this young lady waiting. What the hell d’you mean by it?” retorted the porter.

The driver looked towards her and then unexpectedly winked. His face was rather small with a tendency to loose skin under the eyes; neither particularly attractive nor repulsive. Flo did not feel that he would mean much to her, though her heart quickened at the thought of having to sit beside him. The horse side-stepped and the trap churned round. She expected the driver to get down, but he simply sat and waited.

“It’s a privilege to wait for some folks, sirrie,” he said to the porter. “Shove the goods in the back an’ look as though you know how.”

“Aren’t yo’ gettin’ down to be intraduced . . . or do yo’ know ’er?” the porter asked.

“Apparently you’ve introduced yourself, anyway, you b———r,” replied the driver ungraciously. He seemed now deliberately to be avoiding looking at Flo. “Good job I come along, or there’s no tellin’ what you’d have bin up to.”

“An’ no tellin’ what yo’ll be up to on th’ road, nother.”

“Shove the goods in an’ less cackle,” and with scarcely a change in his tone the driver added, speaking to somewhere between the two of them: “Here, jump up if you’re goin’. Yon man always takes a week to do owt.”

The porter with a single heave let the bass topple over the back-board which was tilted at forty-five degrees held by chains. The bass slid in and jammed part way under the seat. Flo stared at the step wondering how she was to reach in her tight skirt; and then suddenly she found the driver leaning towards her, his face on a level, very close, his eyes a very pale blue and rather small, surrounded by short, very nearly white lashes. His look was intent, insolent, and lasted for several seconds before she became aware that his hand was there waiting, too.

“Catch hold,” he said softly, intimately, and automatically she obeyed and somehow with her right hand burdened with umbrella and bag hitched her skirt above her knee and put her right foot in the iron hoop. His hand was hard and hot and strong, and his pull quick and rough, so that she stumbled rather than stepped up and fell against his knee, which was braced unyieldingly, as if she had fallen against a bent bough. Her hat shifted. She could not recover at once because he kept hold of her hand for an appreciable time longer than was needed; and when he let go she dropped on to the seat with a jerk that caused her arm to loosen over her handbag. It slid on to the seat and then on to the floor near the driver’s foot. He shoved it towards her with the big, muck-spattered toe of his boot and left it. When she sat up again she felt red and foolish and angry and a bit afraid. The driver chirruped to the horse and the wheels went over. There were no mud boards, and for Flo, who had never been in a trap before, it was strange to have the wheel turning so close beside her, the spokes coming up and going down. The iron tyres craunched, and as the horse stepped off the level everything tipped forward, including the seat which was slippy and the back-rest which suddenly seemed about to push her off. Apprehensively she clutched at her companion’s arm, then as quickly jerked her hand away.

“What the hell?” he asked drawlingly. “You’ll be startling the hoss; getting us thrown out.”

“Sorry,” she murmured, staring at the animal’s undulating back. It was slurring its hooves and occasionally slipped, the trap correspondingly making little forward ducks which made Flo clutch the seat edge. “What’s your name?”

“Miss Royer,” she answered, suddenly recalling again Mrs. Mawson’s advice about sticking up for herself.

“Come off it . . . I’m Clem. What is it, Sally, Maggie, Jane . . .?” he demanded, tossing the reins and still looking straight ahead.

“Florence,” she said reluctantly.

“Not many of them round here,” he commented without any particular interest. “Flo for short, I reckon?”

He did not seem to want any reply and she did not give any. The trap went slowly and jerkily down the slope on to a more level stretch. The reins were shaken again and the horse slung its feet and slapped them down in a lazy sort of trot that gave to the trap an uncomfortable forward-and-back rock. Flo felt herself nodding foolishly, but Clem somehow let the lower part of his body sway while his shoulders, neck and head kept steady. He ignored her now, apparently occupied with thoughts which had no connection with her. This relieved her and she looked round. They were rolling towards the church. The houses gathered below it were all grey, with grey stone roofs. In a way she liked them, though it was strange that they were not brick. Then the trap trundled beneath a bridge with a high round arch cut diagonally through an embankment, and the direction of the road changed so that she saw that they would not go very near to the church after all. The horse stopped its clopping and walked, and the trap was steadier. A man shoving a brush along the gutter said, “How do, Clem,” and then rested on his brush to stare after them. They passed between two short rows of houses and then the road ended at a wider road running right and left. The horse without any instruction turned left. Clem let it go at its own pace, which was slow. Next the way began to rise slightly, and the houses on either side were fewer, and soon they were between hedges going along a broad ridge, and the view was extensive and good. In front there was a wide valley narrowing towards its end, which looked about two miles away. It was a moment or two before she realized that, of course, it was the valley up which the train had panted, and she was trying to make out where the line ran when Clem broke in:

“Ever bin away from home before?”

“No,” she answered, defensive.

“How old are you?”

She almost answered, “As old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth,” but realized in time that that was only childish. So she told him correctly. Unimpressed, he spat over the wheel. After a pause he commented: “You’ve non had much experience . . . of owt,” and his stare was on her knees and on her leg in its new stocking. For a score or so of the horse’s leisurely paces he was quiet once more, and she hoped that he had finished. The road was going down again, and through leftward trees she saw the steel-grey of the lake.

“You’ll have plenty of chance to learn something here, anyway,” he broke in enigmatically. “You’re fitted out, aren’t you?”

She felt forced to turn, and once more found his small pale eyes close and scrutinizing. She looked away at once and answered uneasily, “Yes.”

“If our Dot gets jealous you’ll have a hell of a time,” he told her, but with a grin in his tone. “She’s ginger when she gets on the hop.”

“What’s her name?” asked Flo.

“What d’you think? Dot an’ carry one,” he answered, very slightly sarcastic. He was silent again, and Flo saw jutting out just ahead a toy-like, five-sided toll-house. However, before they got to it the horse unguided shambled off the main road leftward. They were in the gullet of a much narrower lane which went down and curved to the right between deep banks topped with crowded hollies, so that at first the lane was really a narrow steeply descending canyon. Then they came out between much lower banks, and Flo saw a lovely spread of country. The lake lay there like a silver bar dropped across the valley. The road went down to a narrow bridge with willows on either side and then climbed, and now on the right she saw a long barn with a grey-green roof with a ridge that sagged and yet looked as strong as rock. Near it was a haystack like a ginger cake with a chunk cut out.

“If Dot gets stuck up an’ tries to bully, come to me,” said Clem with new intimateness. “I know how to manage her.”

Flo liked him better. “Will I have to do farm work?” she asked.

“Depends on Ma, chiefly. If she’ll let him the old man’ll find you work, dunna worry. He’s a b———r for it.”

The end of the barn came to the lane, the gable taking the place of the hedge. Immediately past it was a gate, and Flo was surprised and fluttered when the horse turned in and she saw a cobbled square and on the left a house parallel with the barn. It was the house she stared at—her new home. It was all of the grey green-weathered stone, very plain and very solid: door in the centre, a window at either side and three windows above. Clem dropped the reins on the front-board and the horse took them to a wicket gate and slewed slowly round. With nose pointed to the stable he waited, scratching with his left forefoot.

“Here y’are,” said Clem, sliding a long leg out of the trap. He was reaching for the bass before she realized that it was time that she got out also. She felt backward awkwardly for the iron step. As soon as the weight was off the trap the horse set off towards the stable.

“You silly old sod, have a drink,” shouted Clem, dumping the bass on its end and snatching the near rein smartly. The horse tossed its head and jingled, but turned. Clem slipped the bit and drew the animal’s head towards a deep stone trough. It was set in the garden wall, and was a-bubble from a continuous fall gushing from a rustied iron pipe which stuck out of the stonework a foot above the trough rim. The horse held its jowl over the water for a moment, then made to turn away, but Clem shouted, “Whoa! Sup while you’ve got chance.” The horse kept still again with its lower lip just above the brimming surface. Clem began unhooking and the horse stood there stupid and sulky, as if he didn’t even know what water was for. At last everything was undone and Clem took the weight of the shafts and shouted, “Get on then, you old sinner,” and the horse woke up and clattered eagerly away. It was not till then that Clem seemed to notice Flo still waiting.

“Door’s yonder, can’t you see it?” he asked in much the same tone as he had used to the horse, the intimateness which had made her like him quite gone.

Flo grasped her bass by the rope and struggled up the short flagged path. The door was dull red and was partly open. She rested the bass and hesitantly knocked. Instantly an irritated voice yelled: “Come in. Dunna stand knocking.”

Flo pushed the door and looked up a flagged passage ending at a second door outlined by light penetrating at its cracks.

“In ’ere,” the voice ordered from the left, and Flo saw a large kitchen with a very small, round, snub-nosed woman standing facing her from a rag rug in front of a big shining range. “I’m Mrs. Nadin; Peppr’y Monica they call me, them as dunna like pepper.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Flo, taken aback.

“There doesna seem ta be much pepper abaat thee, any road,” Mrs. Nadin commented, turning to stir with a wooden spoon in a two-gallon iron pan, causing to rise strongly a not unpleasant smell of warm soaked bran and potato peelings. Flo, still holding the bass, stood not knowing what to do.

“Eh, dunna stond theer; shape thysen. Tha hasna come ’ere ta be waited on,” exclaimed Mrs. Nadin, abruptly turning back again. “Tha’s gotten fine togs. Aa hopes tha’s non feart o’ work, cos’ if tha art tha’ll non stay ’ere long. There’s enough silly gawps awready.”

She bustled to a great stone sink beneath the window that looked into the yard and held a neatly black-leaded kettle under a big brass tap. Flo looked round, wondering what to do. She walked to a chair at the end of a long horse-hair upholstered settee and balanced the bass on it.

“Tha’s brought plenty o’ truck,” she heard the sharp comment behind her. “When I were a lass we had one frock for best an’ another to work, an’ nowt else, devil’s wedding or no. Tek your coat off, an’ if yo’ dunna know where ta put it, sit on it. I wonder where that long-legged strip o’ idleness is?”

She bustled out on to the flags and shouted harshly and penetratingly, “Emmott!” Without waiting she bustled back and the second she saw Flo again broke out into her sharp, truculent sentences.

“What did you say your name was?” Flo parted her lips, only there was no pause into which she could put even so small a reply as that. “If yo’ want ta stay, I’ll give yo’ a bit of advice,” went on Mrs. Nadin, apparently without taking breath. “Work hard, keep your mouth shut and your bowels open, an’ you’ll be all right.”

Flo reddened.

“Sit down,” came the next staccato order, “sitting’s cheap. We winna grumble if yo’ wear them through, on’y happen it’ll be your backside as’ll wear first.”

Mrs. Nadin never grinned at her own pleasantries. The chairs were solid with flat seats. Once they had been red stained. This showed between the spokes of the straight backs and on the insides of the legs, but elsewhere they were bare wood. Everything in the kitchen was solid and plain and worn, but the flag floor, uncovered except in front of the fire, was washed to the buff of the stone; the grate black shone, and its silver rails and bevelled edges were as bright as if new. A broad four-rail bamboo rack was hoisted close to the high ceiling, and three sheets that hung there were a delicious white, neatly folded and ironed. Flo was about to sit when Mrs. Nadin noticed her hat.

“Happen tha’s feart we shall pinch it,” she said. “But tha’ll get tired carryin’ it round on your yead, I reckon.”

Flo looked hurriedly round and saw seven hooks on a board fastened along the wall to the left of the door. Most of the hooks held bulky loads of old coats topped with shabby hats, but the end one from the door was empty. She took her costume jacket off and hung that there too.

“You’ll have our Dot as jealous as a bald flea,” said Mrs. Nadin. “Where the hell is that long length o’ pump-water?”

At first Flo thought she meant her daughter, but the little woman went energetically out again to the step and yelled carryingly and peremptorily, “Emmott!” Then back once more she came straight to the grate and lifted the kettle without troubling about the hotness of the handle and poured bubbling water into a tea-pot that had been waiting on the grate shelf. The pot was brown and round and matched the little woman perfectly. Flo had chance to study her for several seconds, and she was struck by the puckered smallness of her face, on which her tiny snub nose protruded exactly as the knob did on the tea-pot lid. Then she was talking again in her harsh quick way:

“Shape thysen. There’s cups an’ saucers in yon cupboard . . . if Emmott doesna come, it’s his own loss.”

The cupboard built into the wall on the left of the grate had six shelves, all holding great stacks of orderly pots. Flo was surprised at the number. She took pots for three and set them on the bare cream-scrubbed table. Mrs. Nadin came back from across the passage with a plate of currant pastry squares. The pastry was brown and thick, but Flo’s teeth broke in easily and it was flaky and delicious. With one elbow on the table and half turned towards the fire Mrs. Nadin sat opposite. Her feet did not touch the floor. She chewed quickly, her lower jaw working a little sideways as a sheep’s does at its cud; she chewed always on the left side as if it was only there that she had teeth.

“What done they call you?” she asked without warning. “Who the heck did they call you that after?”

“My mother chose it,” said Flo. They were the first words she had got in since her arrival, and they were only managed because Monica Nadin had taken up her cup.

“I thought oo were dead,” she commented the next second.

“Who?” Flo asked. “No, my father . . .”

“Happen it’s as well,” said Mrs. Nadin promptly. “If he were as much worry as my mon, she’s better ’bout him. Best thing as could be done to my mon would be tee a brick round his neck an’ drown him.”

Flo heard a slow approach of nailed boots.

“Here’s the long-legged devil,” Mrs. Nadin announced. “Allus turns up ’bout half an hour late.”

Flo nearly smiled at the contrast. Emmott Nadin could only just come in under the lintel. Broad though he was his height and straightness made him look almost slim. His head, too, was long, and was topped by white hair with which an old man would have appeared older, but which made his middle-age look younger. Flo liked him at once, though he did not give her any notice, walking slowly to the single high-backed arm-chair on the right by the grate. His cap he hung on a nail just under the mantelpiece, and one foot he rested on the steel fender in a posture that was obviously a habit.

“What the heckment have you bin doin’?” Mrs. Nadin attacked promptly. “Didna you hear me?”

“Happen I did,” he answered in a non-committal drawl; and he smiled very slightly at Flo.

“Done yo’ know who this is?” his wife demanded.

“Nao,” he replied, not in the least interested.

“It’s the new girl.”

“Oh, ay,” and he nodded very slightly and then looked back into the fire and went on sipping tea, drawing it in with a little hiss between nearly touching teeth.

“He’s ’bout as interestin’ as a log,” Mrs. Nadin commented. “If I didna talk, it ’ud be a dead place, this house. You dunna seem very talkative.”

“No,” said Flo.

“You’ll have no need ta be,” the farmer put in laconically. This time he looked up somewhat more directly, as if he wished to get a fuller impression. He seemed satisfied. “I guess Missis ’as told you already how to get on here . . . keep your mouth shut. If oo’d tek her own advice, there’d be a bit more peace.”

“Tha great gob!” exclaimed Mrs. Nadin, yet the dispute developed no further, and Flo gathered that this way of talking was more or less usual. As soon as he had finished his cup the farmer got up, put his cap on carelessly and went quietly out. Then Clem came in and dropped into the empty chair, keeping his cap on.

“Saw Sally Bowes as I went through . . . oo looks pretty close,” he remarked.

“Fat as a farrowin’ sow. If it isna twins it’ll be triplets. If I looked like her, I’d keep in, ’stead of displayin’ myself,” said Mrs. Nadin. “Did yo’ see Dot?”

“Never looked for her.”

“Once she’s out, she’s satisfied, the flit-about,” said Mrs. Nadin, leaning over the fire-bar filling up her second cup by tilting the kettle. “Doesna matter a tinker’s damn about me stuck in workin’ my guts out.”

“You’ll have a bit of help naa,” he pointed out smoothly.

“Ay, an’ like enough she’ll be as bad by she’s bin here a two-three weeks. Get another cup,” she said suddenly, looking straightly at Flo. “If yo’ dunna look after yourself, no one else will. It’s find your own way to hell or heaven, an’ if you havena got enough grit, you’ll rot.”

Flo helped herself. As she was doing so she heard someone else and looked round to see another man coming in. He was tall like Clem, but slimmer and neater, with longer features like the farmer, and a sandy tint in his hair and eyebrows. He looked at her in a straight but friendly way and said at once: “Hello, who’s this? Anythin’ left?”

“No; it’s all supped,” answered Mrs, Nadin promptly. “You dunna expect us always to have just what you’re wantin’. It’s non a restaurant.”

“Oh, I thought it was.” His voice was gentle, a bit like a woman’s. He turned to Clem. “There’s five geese just come in; the bonniest lot you ever seen. Across by Wood Corner.”

“Oh, ay.” The contrast in the men’s interest was very marked.

“Come over from Redesmere, I guess. I hope they settle. A prime goose any good to you, Ma?”

“Ay, but if that young brat of Willox’s sees them, it’ll be someone else as’ll be havin’ goose, non us.”

“The little blighter,” murmured the last-comer, whom Flo had guessed was Bert. “If he does any more, he’ll get a dose where he doesn’t want it.”

“But where he damn well needs it,” said Mrs. Nadin. “What about milkin’? Are you leavin’ your father to it all?”

They got up evenly. Clem moved to the door, but Bert went to the corner farthest from the window where for the first time Flo saw a rack in which were four upright guns, the oiled barrels standing to different heights. He took up the tallest, a single barrel, and even to Flo, who knew nothing about guns, there was something in his manner that told that he was as used to the weapon as he was to a knife and fork.

“If all fathers took as much care of their brats as he does of his guns, there’d be a crowd on ’em a seet better off,” commented Mrs. Nadin, and called shrilly: “Dunna forget th’ way ta th’ shippon. It’s non daan th’ meadow.”

Bert gave no indication of having heard.

“Run after him and see which way he goes,” ordered Mrs. Nadin.

“Through the gate,” Flo reported.

“The devil shoot him an’ welcome,” was the little woman’s bitter comment. “Come on let’s see if tha knows how ta wash up.”