The Farm by the Lake

Chapter 6

Mrs. Nadin was finnicky. The pots, for instance, could not be wiped simply, but had to be polished. She did not like even a smear of damp to be left. So that they could be dried properly there was a supply of good dry soft cloths made economically out of different shapes and sizes of odd materials, but all neatly hemmed and finished with a little loop of white tape by which they could be hung on any of three brass cup-hooks at the end of the mantlepiece nearest to the sink.

“Naa then, a dry cloth for knives always,” Mrs. Nadin ordered when Flo was about to go on with one on which she had dried only half a dozen pots.

The water was soaped till there was a froth of shiny bubbles. Mrs. Nadin’s arms swished round in it with spasmodic energy that matched her incisive jerky way of talking. Suddenly she interrupted: “Go, see whether Bert’s in th’ shippon,” and she almost snatched the cloth out of Flo’s hands. “If he isna, he’ll be by the watter; fetch him back,” she ordered.

“Please . . . please I don’t know where the . . . the shippon is.”

“There’s non so many doors if tha tries the lot,” snapped the little woman.

Flo went out. There was the faint first blur of dusk coming, emphasised in the yard by the shadows of the buildings on three sides.

In the building that faced her as she walked down the path a yellow light glowed from a small square window at the end near the road. Hesitantly she went towards it across the rough cobbles. A wind came touring over the roofs and touched her with coolness and suddenly the strangeness of everything affected her and she stopped, wondering what was going to happen to her. The utter silence after the wind had passed seemed ominous. There had never been silence like it in Barrow. Almost directly over her was a star, so tiny that at first she was hardly sure whether it was a star or not. Its pinprick light in the vastness of grey-blue made her aware as she had never been before of insignificance. Among houses she had never felt small like this. Past the roofs she could see the hills and even they seemed dwarfed under the great sky. She felt helpless. Why had she come? She thought of the distance that separated her from her mother and home and her eyes ached. Tears as large as thunder spots welled over and trickled warmly down the sides of her nose. She smudged them hurriedly with the back of her hand and broke into a run. A door waited open and she blundered in, being surprised to see turned towards her the back ends of thirteen cows in a long row. She had expected to find Mr. Nadin, but saw no one; and then his voice coming mysteriously from somewhere at the far end said: “Eh now?” It was a quiet, friendly question, and abruptly she put up her hand to smooth away the tear signs more effectively.

The farmer’s head came from between the flanks of a black and a roan, his cap comically pulled down the left side of his face.

“Is Mr. Bert here?” she asked.

“Mister Bert,” he repeated with the slightest sarcasm. “And what would you be wantin’ with him?”

“Missis sent me. She . . . she said if he wasn’t here, I was to go down to the water.

“Oh, ay,” said the farmer more sarcastically, and in a way that indicated that that was all there was to say about that. “How’d you like ta milk?”

“Ay, try a hand,” said the voice of Clem, and a kind of steady swishing that had just begun to puzzle Flo stopped, and out unexpectedly from between the two end cows poked Clem’s head, also with cap askew. “Yo’ll be more use than traipsin’ after yon mon every time.”

“But . . . but Missis said . . .”

“There’s a stool an’ pail,” interrupted the farmer, nodding to an oblong opening cut back into the tremendously thick wall, “an’ Polly ’ere is a good ’un to start on.”

He lifted himself with a single heave, balancing in his left hand a polished bucket half-full of milk and in his right the stool which he had picked up from between his legs.

“Ee, I don’t know. I never . . .” began Flo surprised and hesitant.

“Put it here,” said Mr. Nadin, taking no notice. He moved the stool a bit closer, and when she held the bucket gingerly between her calves, he thrust it snugly up between her thighs. “If you dunna hold it, yo’ll have it punced away like a football. Sit up to her; Polly’s a good gal, she winna mind.”

Flo got the slightly musky cow smell for the first time. She felt chokey and wondered how she could escape, but the farmer was standing over her and Clem was on the gangway leaning against the wall, an expectant grin under the down curve of his cap. Flo looked up and caught the full flare of the flame in the wall-lamp and then could not see when she tucked her head down to peer under the cow.

“Fore-tits first,” said the farmer in a caressing voice that helped her. He passed behind her and crouched so that she felt his breath. “Like this,” he explained, “fingers in line and press evenly inta the palm.”

She took the teats nervously and the cow stirred.

“Stond yo’, Poll,” coaxed the farmer. “It’s non forcing it out; it’s gettin’ her ta let it down. Oo knows you’re strange.”

The teats were smooth and warm. Flo could feel, too, the warmth of the animal as she leaned close, but tried not to let her shoulder touch.

“Dunna be feart. Oo’ll non let it come if you dunna give her confidence,” urged the farmer gently. “There’s nowt ta be feart on.”

Flo was fascinated. As she closed and relaxed her grip and drew the first weak dribbles she forgot nervousness, forgot the creasing of her skirt, the showing of her legs and Clem’s grinning stare. The uncertain dribbles she managed were tantalizing. Her right hand would get a sudden surprising flow, and her left, nothing; then nothing at all with either hand. There seemed to be no milk there to draw. Then Polly would let the teats fill and there was a satisfying tinkling trickle on to the bucket bottom.

“You’re shapin’,” said the farmer, getting up. “It’s non a job as anyone can do. There’s many folk can milk; but they’re non all milkers by a long chalk. Clem, ’ere, he’d milk a piece of brass piping, but he hasna got the touch.”

“You have ta be born with it,” Clem mimicked, slouching away down the uneven-floored shippon.

“Some folk have and some havena,” agreed the farmer, deep and confidential. “Keep trying . . . there’s no other way.”

Flo tried patiently. She wanted to please the farmer. She felt that it was a test. Her wrists began to ache until she could have cried out, but she determined to keep on as long as the farmer stayed.

“Try t’other paps,” he quietly advised after a while, and she was glad to change. She had imagined cows to be coarse-haired, like bears, but now she felt the silkiness of Polly’s bag resting on her right wrist. The back paps were shorter; she had to bunch her fingers to grip, only Polly seemed to be increasing confidence in her and let the milk flow more easily. There began to be a kind of hesitant rhythm and Flo felt the beginnings of pride and thought how she would write home.

“You’re non getting much froth,” said the farmer with his faint smile, “but you’re comin’ on. When you can get half a bucket of froth you con begin to count you’re a milker.” Then he showed her how to draw her first finger and thumb gently down the paps to drip off. “That’s one of the chief things,” he impressed on her. “If you leave cow’s partly-what done, you ruin ’em.”

He went to the door and she heard the milk from his bucket going into the sieve and pouring through into the big can. She tried perseveringly, till at last she was sure that Polly was as dry as could be, and this she felt was confirmed by Polly’s increasing restlessness. The cow must know how useless it was for her to keep on, so she got up. She forgot the stool and had to go back. She had about a quart, she judged, and she wondered if that was how much cows usually gave. Mr. Nadin met her at the door.

“Finished? Naa, let’s see,” and he led back. Grasping Polly’s tail low down with his left hand he curved it up, holding it under the weight of his hand on her haunch, and reached down with his right hand. For a moment he massaged Polly’s bag, then began to draw. His hand was huge and thick, but Flo, watching intently, got only an impression of its sensitiveness; it was a caressing hand, which surprised her by the instant, strong spurt of milk it induced. “Oo’s non quite dry, you see,” he said, not unkindly. “Fetch your bucket.”

He crouched holding the bucket with his left hand. Immediately Polly had her tail free she clouted him boldly, but he took no notice. The milk rang the bucket bottom. Flo felt chagrined; evidently, she thought, she was not a born milker. But after half a dozen good draws all that the farmer got were a few drippings.

“Best part of the milk,” he told her. “Creamy. You’ve non done so bad. Oo kept that drop up a purpose.”

Flo at once felt proud once more, for there was a subtle suggestion of approval greater than the words in their simple meaning expressed. And immediately after that the farmer abandoned her as it were. He said no more but went along by the buildings and turned in at another door. After a moment or two he came out and went farther along and in at a third door. In there he stayed. Of Clem or Bert there was no sign, and Flo, standing by the big can with her empty bucket, felt that none of them cared what she did. She wondered whether she ought still to go after Bert, but she decided to go back to the house. As she approached doubtfully Mrs. Nadin seemed to bounce into the doorway.

“Where’ve you bin?” she demanded. “Did you get him?”

“No,” Flo confessed, feeling guilty. “I’ve been learning to milk.”

“Milkin’ . . . there might be nowt else but milkin’ as mattered. You were taken on ta help in th’ house. Happen he’d like me ta milk an’ all. He’d like me ta run the whole ditherin’ place, outside as well as in, I reckon.”

“I’m sorry,” Flo murmured.

“You! What are you sorry about?” demanded the irate little woman. “You’ll have enough to be sorry about ’bout being sorry for someone else’s sorrers. I’ve bin waitin’ ta show you your bedroom.”

She bustled up the flagged passage that divided the house. From near the front door a steep stairway ran backward and took them on to a narrow landing with a long window at one end. There was exceedingly shiny oilcloth carrying a miniature turkey carpet design, brilliant in crimson and blue. Along it lay a narrow strip of grey matting bordered with a red line and two thinner green lines. Just by the top of the first flight a second lot of stairs, even narrower and steeper, took them to a small square landing. A single step on the left put them into a dark room with a single window at the far side, through which Flo saw the lake. The ceiling went up to the ridge like the side of a tent. There was a double bed with a pink counter-pane, a yellow painted dressing table with drawers, and an ottoman dressed in chintz with a design of little mauve-and-orange daisies.

“You con hang your best things here,” said Mrs. Nadin, in the corner opposite to the door, drawing aside on little brass rings a length of similar chintz, disclosing a triangle board fixed into the angle of the walls. Under the board was a hook like a tiny anchor with three tines. “If there’s anythin’ else you want, dunna be feart of opening your mouth. You’ve got a tongue, havena you?”

“Yes,” said Flo meekly.

“Most folks has. The old man’ll waken you of a mornin’, so dunna think as it’s hell’s bell.”

Immediately over the bed head Flo saw an iron bell as big as a four-pound jar, with a solid iron knob nearly as big as a golf ball on the end of the clapper. The bell hung on a spring which looked as if it were made of hoop iron. It was evidently rung by a wire that came through a slot in the wall.

“My, I shall be afraid of it falling,” exclaimed Flo.

“An’ if it does it’ll give you a rare clout. It’ll waken you, any road.”

“I’m a pretty good getter up.”

“So are most of us . . . when it comes ta gettin’ upstairs for bed,” said Mrs. Nadin drily. She was still a bit short of breath from the climb. She dropped down the single step and bobbed up on the far side and turned right along a narrow landing between a blank wall on the left and a handrail to prevent anyone from falling downstairs. At the end were two doors, one on the left into a long unlighted garret under the rafters (“Rubbish dump,” said Mrs. Nadin), and the other into a surprising room more than twice as long as it was broad. It ran the whole length of the house, for there was a window at either end, and at no place was the ceiling more than nine feet high, falling away to five feet high at the other side. Had the two beds which were pushed against the wall there not had low heads they would not have gone under. The beds were ten yards apart, apparently not wishing to have anything to do with one another.

“This is where the two lads sleep,” said Mrs. Nadin. “You’ll keep this floor right, and I’ll inspect it once a week; it’s too near heaven for an old sinner like me ta come often.”

One window was shut and the other open, and Flo guessed that the bed near the open window was Bert’s. That was in the end, too, which looked out like her own towards the lake.

Mrs. Nadin set off down again. Then Flo was shown round the first floor; into the room where Mrs. Nadin and “the old fool” slept, into “Young Dot’s” room, into the spare room “which doesna spare us from work nohow”, and into the bathroom, which was as large as any of the other rooms, having evidently been made out of a bedroom. “When we’re tight we fix a bed up ’ere an’ all, and all goo mucky,” Mrs. Nadin explained. Flo could not understand why they should ever need more sleeping rooms than there were already without the bathroom. By contrast with the two poky rooms in Balloon Street, Barrow, the farmhouse seemed to her colossal.

“You’ll non need ta worry ’bout bein’ short o’ work,” said Mrs. Nadin. “An’ non o’ your shoving dust under carpets an’ spiders inta cracks. If I find any of those goings on’ you’ll get th’ dust served up for your dinner an’ spiders with it.”

“Ough!” said Flo involuntarily.

When they got back into the kitchen a slim young woman was there drawing off white woollen gloves.

“Huh, you come back some time,” Mrs. Nadin barked promptly. “When I was your age if I’d ’a stayed out as you do it would have bin down with my drawers an’ my bare bottom spanked.”

“Thank heaven I wasn’t born in those days,” said the young woman.

“You’d find you were back in ’em if I had my way,” the older woman commented; and then with a complete change of tone, “Who’ve you seen?”

“Nobody very interesting,” was the slightly drawled reply.

“Then what have you bin gawpin’ at . . . nothin’?” demanded her mother with increasing aggressiveness. “If I stayed out, I’d stay out for summat.”

“Who’s this?” the young woman asked.

Flo saw a slight resemblance to Mrs. Nadin; small, somewhat crowded features, thin lips, and eyes inclined to glare.

“The new girl,” said Mrs. Nadin briefly. “Florence; though whether she was christened, or got it like a dog does, God knows. This ’ere’s Dot; should have bin born a duchess, but I hadna copped the right feller.”

Dot said, “How d’you do?” and began to loosen her coat, which was brown—a good Harris.

“If you want your things upstairs you’d better carry ’em,” said Mrs, Nadin. “See Matilda, or Gertrude, Dot?”

Flo thankfully took her costume coat off the hook and her bass and lugged them to the attic. She shut the door and sank on the ottoman. Suddenly she thought of the chintz and of how she was creasing it. She tried to smooth it and then crossed to the window. The catch was back and the frame went up unexpectedly easily so that the weights bumped in their slots. She poked her head out carelessly and abruptly gripped the sill ridge, taken unawares by the height. Dusk had thickened, making the ground seem a tremendous distance below. But after a moment she recovered, and instead of looking straight down she looked outward, and there was the lake, with a white sheen on, as if some of the last light from the sky had fallen there and would continue to glow through the night. Between the house and the water there was a hundred yards of gently sloping meadow, and then a thick hedge of sallow canes. Beyond the water was a dark cloud-like bank of trees with a hill rising behind. As Flo stared intently a shot smashed the silence, the flat, sharp report echoing distinctly three times away into distance. Totally unexpected, the shot made her start, and but for her grip on the sill ledge she might have fallen. She felt a brief recurrence of fear and drew back, and then leaned out again, forgetful, for from behind the sallows had whirled up a great flock of birds that flickered whitely against the opposite hillside. There was a brief crying which told her that sea-birds were there, and in the silence that seemed to close in on the echoes of the shot like a lid she believed that she heard the rush of wings; but it was very faint, and perhaps it was a wind current moving in the grass, though up there she could not feel it. For several minutes she did not move, fascinated by this unexpected shattering of a peacefulness which at first she had thought to be utter stagnation, complete emptiness. Now she sensed a mysteriousness, and was dimly aware that in the dusk there was an abundance of life that at present she did not know or understand; and she wondered if she would ever come to know about it.

The white flickering dissipated almost as swiftly as it had risen, but staring higher, above the opposite skyline into the grey shading of clouds, Flo saw occasional lonely black motes passing to and fro. Then the last of those disappeared, and her gaze came back to the still water-sheen and to the motionless dark grey thickness of the sallows. Slowly, so that at first she was not sure whether she saw anything or not, the black shape of a man seemed to materialize there; and then she knew that he was coming to the house. The thought that it was someone who had no right to be there, someone who intended evil, rushed through her mind; and then she smiled. Of course she knew who it was. If she had gone, as Mrs. Nadin had told here, she might have been with him now coming up the meadow. She felt a vague regret, but a moment afterwards shrugged it off, and hastily drew back into the room’s shadow. Instinctively she knew that he was not like Clem, but strangely there had flashed back to her the picture of the youth lying supremely at his ease on the curved shell of the submarine passing the Barrow bridge, and suddenly she was aware that it was youth that she wanted. She had come into a household of old folks; she must . . .

The click of a gate latch interrupted and she leaned past the curtain. But there was a thick dark tree below and she could not see. Suddenly she remembered how long she had been, and quickly began to tug her blouse over her head and side-stepped out of her skirt. She dashed at the bass and struggled with the rope, which was stiff and hard as though it had been baked. But soon she was shaking a blue gingham frock down over upstretched arms and stiff-necked head. Swiftly she patted and stroked herself and ran to the glass to look how her hair had survived. She could hardly see and there was no time to light the candle. She let her hair do with a brief bunching all round with cupped hands. The strangeness of the stairs made her creep carefully. The kitchen door was shut, outlined by fine lines of light. It was an effort to put her hand on the knob and turn it because she felt like an intruder.

“Half-an-hour ta titivate thisel’, by gum!” Mrs. Nadin greeted her. “Tha’ll be another like our Dot.”