Portrait of Elmbury (12 page)

They had fine upstanding sons; and they practised among themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously I am not sure, an admirable form of artificial selection. Indeed, I believe that the farming community is the only one, in England, which still breeds at a sufficient rate and yet manages to keep its stock sound by the inbreeding of good qualities. Modern biologists believe that not only ability, but specific kinds of ability, can be transmitted from generation to generation. In the Elmbury district the farmer's sons, a boisterous rip-roaring breed, had their young flirtations with the local barmaid; but in the end, almost to a man, they married farmer's daughters. The offspring were likely
to be homozygous—they would carry a double dose of the good dominant tendency; and so the stock improved itself by selection. Unfortunately England's wars imposed a different sort of selection, and killed off a high percentage of this good stock as soon as it became bullet-worthy, but before it had had time to breed.

For they were not the sort who would hold back. They went to the Great War with the yeomanry, riding their own horses which they refused to leave behind; about twenty of them from the Elmbury district alone. Somebody decided that the time had come to “exploit a break-through” and ordered the cavalry into the gap. But there hadn't been a break-through, and there wasn't a gap. The young men settled down in their saddles and rode as they would ride a Point-to-Point into the enemy lines. Both of Mr. Jeff's fine sons fell that day; and after four years, out of the twenty, only seven came home.

It was these seven, and some younger ones just out of school, whom I met first at markets and got to know later out hunting and at shooting-parties and Point-to-Points. They were strong as lions, merry as crickets, and proud as Lucifer. There was no game or country sport which they did not excel in, with the exception of fishing; this they considered “too tame.” (Curiously enough, you hardly ever find a farmer who is a fisherman). But they were grand free-hitting cricketers, good shots, and remarkable horsemen. They raced and rode to hounds with the recklessness of John Myttons. They sometimes broke their bones, but horses couldn't kill them, it took motor-bikes to do that. When they turned their attention to motor-bikes terror came to the quiet country lanes. Previously their recklessness had been limited to some extent by respect and pity for horseflesh; but for internal combustion engines they had neither respect nor pity, and since fear was unknown to them it was inevitable that some of them should break their necks.

The Grammar School had given them as much schooling as they were prepared to take; they could do simple sums (and even a few complicated ones, for they kept their fathers' books and practised the usual ingenuous deceptions upon His Majesty's Inspector of Taxes), they could read, and actually did read the
poems of Whyte-Melville, and they could write (though they could not spell) in that large, round, schoolgirlish script which is due to lack of practice. Their big hands were unfamiliar with pens; but they could do most other things with them, they knew how to hold the reins when the four-year-old started bucking; how to chuck the gun when the pheasants streamed over downwind, how to set the ploughshare at the right angle, how to use a scythe with beautiful and rhythmic grace, how to lay a hedge, how to carpenter a gate, how to hold a new-born lamb, how to snap a rabbit's neck, and how to take an engine to pieces— although they despised engines.

You would meet them at market, fresh from a nine-mile walk leading the bull which was “so bad-tempered they didn't trust the man with it”; and if you walked round with them you'd find out that even at twenty they could price a pen of sheep to within a few shillings, a milking cow to the nearest pound. Most of them kept pigs, which are on most farms the sons' perquisites, as poultry are their mothers', and they would drive a hard bargain till the dealers cried out for mercy and said, “When you boys step into your fathers' shoes, we'll all be ruined!” You would meet them again in the bar at the Shakespeare (for their fathers went to the Swan) drinking quarts of beer and flirting outrageously with Millie and Effie, the two blonde barmaids.

These two merry wantons, whose favours were famous for miles, were at once generous, fickle, careful, and utterly amoral, yet they did not lack either tenderness or humour. They were therefore the very thing for awkward young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one; and in Heaven it shall be accounted to them for virtue that they never broke a home nor a heart beyond mending, that they never spent more of a young man's money than he could afford, and that they endured the amateurish embraces of hobbledehoys and sent those hobbledehoys away, in the fullness of time, wiser and better and tenderer men.

And you would meet the farmers' sons at village dances, with scrubbed and shining faces, very stiff and uncomfortable-looking in their white waistcoats and tails. On one occasion—it was just after Ted Norris had broken his neck in a motor-bike accident— no less than six of them arrived at Brensham Village Hall on horseback. It seemed that a sort of Trades Union of fathers, alarmed at the increasing mortality among their sons, had gone on strike: Not a penny of pocket-money unless you give up your motor-bikes. They stabled their horses at the Bell Inn, danced till one o'clock in the morning, and then sat drinking with the landlord at the Bell in a private room until nearly three. When they saddled up their horses it was bright moonlight; and this reminded them of the old engravings of “The Midnight Steeplechase” which hung in the Shakespeare bar. I believe it was Jerry Nixon from Downend Farm who actually had the idea; he was generally the ringleader of their mischief. “I'll race you all to Elmbury Cross for a fiver,” he said, “and the devil take the hindmost!”

They agreed that the landlord should be starter. Each could choose his own route, either cross-country or along the road. It was four and a half miles to Elmbury Cross: just the right distance for a Point-to-Point. They shortened their stirrups and prepared to start.

But there was a girl, Dorrie Monks, who had somehow got left behind after the dance. There had been a muddle about who was to take her home; or more likely, for she was a great tomboy and very much in love with Jerry, she had deliberately given her partner the slip in order that she might have a drink with the boys at the Bell. They had arranged with the landlord to put her up there; but goodness knows what her father would have to say in the morning, for he was the sternest and the strictest of all those farmers who had banded themselves together against motor-bikes and wild behaviour. Now Dorrie went up to Jerry as he prepared to mount his great horse Demon, and whispered
something in his ear. He grinned. “Damn it,” he said, “you're right. Demon won three races last spring; he must carry a penalty!”—and he lifted her up and perched her on the saddle in front of him, one hand round her waist, the other holding the reins.

“Now, Mister Landlord,” he said, “we're ready when you are. Give us a start.”

They went down the village street with an appalling clatter, waking half the inhabitants including the policeman, who pursued them ineffectually on his bicycle. At the end of the village they began to scatter, each taking his own route. Denis Woodbridge stuck to the road, which luckily was not tarmac'd in those days. Derek Surman chose the road too; but he preferred to gallop down the grass verge where he soon encountered a heap of stones into which his mare neatly pitched him. Pat and Ray Loveridge went across country and were doing well until they came to the Carrant Brook, which was in flood. Their horses couldn't jump it, so they swam across; but the delay beat them. Tom Spry also went across country, but he suffered from two handicaps: he was drunk, and his horse was one of those fortunately rare and perverted beasts which from time to time elect to lie down without respect for their rider's wishes and roll in the mud. When he was sober, Tom could usually prevent this; but he was far from sober. The horse rolled to its heart's content and trotted home, leaving him incapable in a Slough of Despond.

Jerry and Dorrie left the road early, took a bridle path along the river bank, and found the going very easy; they would have won had not Dorrie remembered a short cut across her father's farm but forgotten that the vital gate had been padlocked on account of a troublesome bull. Finding their way barred, they tried another short cut through the garden; but here again the gate was locked—Dorrie's father was a careful man—and Jerry decided to put Demon at the fence. They cantered up to it through Mr. Monks' asparagus bed; and Demon would have managed it easily, even with the double load, if he had not slipped on the soft ground just as he was taking off.

Dorrie fell clear; but Jerry was pinned to the ground by
Demon's heavy quarters, and as the horse got up its off-hind hoof struck him on the head. It wasn't a serious injury; but it knocked him out, and it caused a great flow of blood. Dorrie, meanwhile, was smothered with mud and scratched by the thorn hedge, and her dress was practically torn off her.

This, then, was the tableau which confronted the amazed Mr. Monks, who had a cow calving and therefore happened to be about early: a great horse careering over his asparagus; a seemingly moribund young man whose white shirt and waistcoat were smothered with blood; and a half-naked daughter.

It took him about a week to see the joke. Meanwhile Jerry was put to bed in his house and anxiously nursed by Dorrie. Jerry's father arrived in a great rage determined “to give the boy a good talking to.” But Jerry, looking very pale and with his forehead full of stitches, disarmed him altogether by saying:

“Well, Dad, you might just as well have let us ride our motor-bikes!”

He then called Dorrie, who was shamelessly listening outside the door, and before Mr. Nixon could get in a word they'd confessed to him that they were going to get married.

“Well, I'll be beggared!” was all Mr. Nixon could say; and having suitably blessed them he went downstairs and discussed the matter with Mr. Monks, who brought out a bottle of whisky, so that they sat together drinking all the afternoon and on into the evening. From shaking their heads over the irresponsibility of their offspring they got to shaking their heads over their own youthful follies, and to wishing they too were young again and congratulating each other that their children were none of your namby-pamby modern brats but chips of the old block, young rips to be proud of.

And then they each had another drink, the last in the bottle, to celebrate the engagement.

Jerry took a small farm of about eighty acres; it was an uneconomic size, being much too small, but as his father said, “It'll do for him to practise on.” Mr. Monks added gloomily that “It'd learn the young folk that farmers lose money, but 'tweren't big enough for them to lose too much.”

It happened, however, that by sheer good luck Jerry made more profit, in his first year, than either his father or his father-in-law. The little farm had two orchards of very good Bon Chrétien pears. The trees were bearing well, whereas on the whole it was a bad fruit season. Jerry asked my uncle to sell the growing fruit by auction. Three dealers bid against each other for the Bon Chrétiens and ran them up to two hundred and fifty pounds.

The two old men, stocking up their land after Foot-and-Mouth, faced a loss on their year's trading. After the sale they congratulated Jerry on his good fortune, but they spoke wise words of warning also. Mr. Nixon said:

“Average it out, my boy. Average it out over ten years and then you'll see what the orchard's really worth. Gold doesn't grow on pear trees.”

And Mr. Monks said:

“Don't let it go to your head. I've seen more young men ruined by a good first season than by a bad one!”

Both had been farming for forty years. They took the long view. They knew that any fool, given a bit of luck, could make a profit on a single season; but it took a good farmer to tide over the bad seasons which would follow as sure as the leaves would fall.

These sales of growing fruit were a pleasant contrast to the bustle and noise and worry of markets. They took place on
summer evenings in the leafy orchard country around Brensham Hill. We would meet the buyers at the farm gates and lead them through the orchards; they would see the fruit half-formed already though the late snow of fallen petals still sprinkled the grass between the trees; and they would calculate in their wisdom how many pots of plums or apples or pears or cherries were a-growing there among the green leaves, safe and sure save for the slight risk of a June frost or a July blight, waiting only for St. Swithin's rain to christen them and the midsummer sun to paint them purple or yellow or red. At the gates of each orchard we would pause, and wait for the oldest and slowest of the buyers to catch up with us; and then my uncle would ask them what they would bid for the season's prospects, how much for the apples which as yet were knobbly and green, how much for the cherries which were so small you could hardly see them and to which the last reluctant petals still stubbornly clung.

Blossom-time was always a period of anxiety in the neighbourhood of Elmbury where big areas were given over entirely to fruit-growing. For the market-gardeners and fruit-farmers it was a time of hoping and fearing, praying and cursing, rejoicing and grieving. How anxiously they read the weather forecasts (if they had faith in meteorology) or consulted the wet-and-dry thermometer at their back door (if they understood it) or more likely prognosticated country-fashion on the basis of the behaviour of birds and animals, the colour of a sunset, or the remembered jingle of an old weather rhyme!

We didn't like the blossom to come too early. In forward seasons the plum-orchards would get their first sprinkling of snow at the end of March, with the cherry—“loveliest of trees” —breaking into full bloom a few days later. The growers would shake their heads gravely. “Hast seen the blow a-blowin' at Brensham? … If we should get two-three sharp frosses now …” That would mean the ruin of their crop; in some
cases, where “little men” depended on a few acres for their livelihood, it might mean their own ruin. They dreaded the brief white frosts of middle spring which crept with the early-morning mists up the valley; but worst of all were hailstorms followed by keen nights: