Portrait of Elmbury (20 page)

As an example of what I mean by the odd-jobber, I quote the typical case of Jim Fletcher, an alert and able-bodied man of about thirty, a jolly good worker when he wanted to work but also a devoted angler who was almost always to be found at the waterside when the weather was right and the fish were biting. I asked him how he contrived this, while supporting a wife and three children and how nevertheless he managed to have plenty of money to spend in the pub. I give his answer, which referred to the year 1925, in the form of a statement of his income such as he might have sent to the Inspector of Taxes if he had had to pay Income Tax.

JIM FLETCHER'S EARNINGS DURING 1925

You will see that although he earned £143 16s. 10d. in the year—an average of nearly £3 a week
¹
—Jim Fletcher did little more than 200 full days' work, an average of less than 4 days a week. His work was almost always fun—except the sprout-picking, which he didn't enjoy. (But it happened at a time when odd jobs were hard to come by.) He had no appearances to keep up, and spent practically nothing on clothes. His household was never short of food. He grew his own vegetables, brought home
plenty of eels and other fish (including, I daresay, an occasional poached salmon), and could always lay his hands on a rabbit or even—though he wouldn't admit it—a hare. He killed a pig once a year, and was never short of bacon. He always had plenty of firing, for in flood-time he went out in his punt and collected logs from the river. The three days a week when he wasn't working he spent in fishing, “mucking about in his boat,” or running after the hounds.

In fact, Jim Fletcher lived like a lord.

Apart from the growing queue outside the labour exchange (“This running sore in our body-politic,” as the Mayor, given to pomposity, frequently described it) I found Elmbury little changed. The farming community for the most part was still living on its fat; it hadn't yet felt the full blast of the depression and most of the farmers had respectable bank-balances left over from the prosperous years. The cautious majority, anticipating that it would be a long time before conditions became normal, cut down their expenses and husbanded their resources, reckoning their capital would “tidy them over” till trade improved. The feckless ones persisted in a belief that next season the topsy-turvy world would mysteriously right itself, and took comfort from some mystic saying of their grandfathers, “Things always goes in threes; three bad years, and then three good ones.” These optimists overstocked their land on the principle, “Now is the time to buy, when prices are at rock-bottom.” Unfortunately the economic waters were uncharted; no lead-line could find where rock-bottom lay. Six months later stock prices were lower still, and the farmers found that they had given free hospitality to a large number of beasts which they sold for less than they had paid for them.

Since common sense appeared to fail them in the face of inexplicable disaster, other farmers discovered a belief in luck and took to dealing, in the frantic hope that they'd be lucky
enough to catch the chancy unstable market at the right moment. Mr. Tempest, the wise, tight-lipped little bank manager, would warn them in vain: “When I hear of a farmer going in for dealing, I always expect that the next time I hear of him will be through the Official Receiver.” A farmer's job, said Mr. Tempest, was to grow things; and mixing his metaphors a bit, he added, “Let him stick to his last.”

It was good advice; and Mr. Transome, for example, would have been wise to heed it. Jeremy Transome was a fairly successful farmer with an eye for a bargain. He knew a bit about cattle and had often been pretty lucky in the past. He farmed the Highwoods Farm at Lower Hampton: 280 acres of mixed pasture and arable, where for fifteen years he'd made a good living. When the depression came he began to get into difficulties, and he thought he'd get out of them by doing a bit of dealing. He persuaded the reluctant Mr. Tempest to increase the mortgage on the farm by five hundred pounds and he bought fifty yearlings for an average price of ten pounds each. On the whole he bought them well; he was a very good judge of beasts. He turned them out in his pastures and proceeded to “watch the market.” This meant attending the stock sales in four different towns once a week. When he went to market he spent money. He spent about thirty shillings each time; it was mostly spent on drinks for potential customers, and he put it down quite fairly to “expenses”; six pounds a week for expenses.

At last he decided to send 25 of his yearlings to market. They were looking well, for they'd had a month's good grazing; but the market happened to be a bad one, Mr. Transome was dissatisfied with the prices and he bought them in at eleven pounds a head. Indeed the prices for yearlings at that sale were so low that Mr. Transome thought it would be a golden opportunity missed if he didn't buy some more. He bought thirty at nine pounds each.

Next day it began to freeze and the grass stopped growing.

He was short of grazing, for he had grossly overstocked his land; and soon he had to start feeding the cattle with hay. He was short of hay too, and he had to buy a ten-ton rick at three
pounds a ton. He would gladly have sold his cattle now, for eleven pounds; but during the hard weather they had gone back in condition, and even to his prejudiced eye they didn't look worth more than nine pounds ten.

Now he was on the slippery slope indeed. His dealing excursions, and his days at the markets, had caused him to neglect his farm. He was short of labour, for he'd sacked a couple of men when he decided to go in for dealing; and the few labourers he had were inclined to take things easy when the boss was out. The farm, which had been tidy and well-kept, began to look neglected; there were broken gates and fences, and one day some yearlings got out and it cost him a day's work—and a couple of quid—to get them back again.

Ditching and draining had been put off too long; and when the thaw came, with heavy rain for three days, some fields flooded and Mr. Transome was harder put to it than ever for grazing. He was compelled to keep one bunch of yearlings in a sloppy field where, as the neighbours said, “they'd soon grow webbed-feet like ducks.”

And now the rumour began to spread about the countryside that Mr. Transome was in a bad way. Perhaps he owed his hay dealer or his cake-merchant a larger sum than usual, and had left it longer unpaid. Perhaps Mr. Tempest had even been compelled to return one of his cheques: “Refer to Drawer.” At any rate the dangerous rumour went about, and the professional cattle-dealers, who had long ears for such tales, came to hear of it.

And so before long unasked visitors began to call at his farm. They came in cars; they came, very often, from a long way off, They were genial and friendly men, and business had brought them, they said, into the district. They'd heard by chance that Mr. Transome might have a few yearlings for sale. Yes, thankee very much, they'd come in and have a drink and talk it over. …

Their visits generally cost Mr. Transome a bottle of whisky. That was only 12/6 then, but it was another charge added to the cost of the yearlings.

The dealers offered nine pounds apiece for them. Mr. Transome held out for nine pounds ten. The dealers politely refused;
they'd had a look round the farm and noted its condition. They smiled to themselves and drove away.

But a fortnight later, by a curious coincidence, they would find themselves in the district again.

Meanwhile Mr. Transome had to buy some more hay. The floods went down, but left the grass sour and muddy. Some of the cattle went sick, and Mr. Transome had to call in the vet. Two of them died. He sold them in the end, desperately, foolishly, ruinously, at eight pounds fifteen apiece. He had to; his creditors were threatening to put him in court. The yearlings had cost him, in hay and grazing, drovering, travelling, vet's bills and whisky, about fifty shillings a head more than the purchase price. But they had cost him more than that; they had cost him Highwoods Farm. For the dealers' cheque went to pay the haydealer and the cake-merchant; and Mr. Transome hadn't enough capital to restock his farm. The fields which had been overstocked now lay empty; and there was no profit in that. The next season was a bad one, and it finished him.

“My Head Office deeply regrets,” wrote Mr. Tempest, “having to foreclose on the mortgage”; and as he dictated the letter he was thinking, in his favourite mixed metaphor: “The cobbler should stick to his last.”

Some of the farmers, especially the madcap, John Myttonish, devil-take-the-hindmost crowd, decided to ignore the depression and carry on as if that mysterious catastrophe hadn't happened. You would find them in the Shakespeare drinking damnation to the Ministry of Agriculture; you would see them out hunting, going as if the devil indeed were at their heels. After market about a dozen of them would gather in the “private” room at the Swan and play solo half the night; or an even sillier game, the silliest card game in the world, which is called Farmers' Glory. They lost and won a great deal, and paid their losses by cheque, adding to the complexity of their farm accounts. They
also had a habit of tossing for everything. If they lost at cards they would say, “Toss you double or quits”; if they wanted a round of drinks they'd toss to see who paid; if they bought a cow for twenty-five pounds they were quite likely to say, “Toss you to see if I give you thirty pounds or twenty.”

It was a crazy way to carry on, and it nearly broke the heart of Mr. Tempest, who had known them from boyhood and in his private capacity was very fond of them. In the pub he drank with them as a friend; in his office he talked to them as a stern father. But their mood was a difficult one to deal with; they were puzzled, angry, bitter, and rebellious against a changing world which they could not understand. Their reaction to it was to ride still more recklessly out hunting. ‘Twould save themselves, they said, and everybody else a lot of trouble if they broke their necks.