Elizabeth Elgin - Whisper on the Wind

Climbing the garden fence he made for the long, straight drive and the beeches and oaks that stood either side of it like unmoving, unspeaking sentries. This morning he was taking the ‘field’ way to school, cutting behind Ridings and the pasture at the back of Home Farm, to pick up the lane that led to the pub and the school nearby. This morning’s journey was longer and wetter underfoot and usually taken in spring and summer only, but Arnie felt cheated to be missing the dirt and din of a threshing day and was determined at least to see the monstrous, huffing, puffing engine; to close his eyes with delight as it clattered and clanked past him, making the most wonderful, hideous noises.

Instead, he saw Hester Fairchild. She was standing very still, gazing at the ploughed earth around her and she looked up, startled, as he approached.

‘Arnie! Hullo! Taking the long way to school this morning?’

He gave her a beam of delight. He liked Mrs Fairchild; not because Aunt Poll liked her but because Mrs Fairchild liked small boys. She was always pleased, really pleased, to see him. And she didn’t look at him as if he were a nuisance nor speak to him in the silly voice grown-ups used when they spoke to children.

‘I’ve come this way to see if the threshing team has got here. Are you going to see it, too?’

‘No, Arnie. I came to look at the ploughing – to see how they’re getting on.’ She had come, truth known, because she knew the ploughs would be idle today; because Mat and Jonty and the Italian would be busy all day in the stackyard and she wouldn’t have to acknowledge a man she would rather were anywhere than on her land. ‘Shall we walk together as far as the house?’

‘All right.’ Arnie liked Ridings, too; liked it because it was big and full of echoes and hollow noises. He liked the big, painted pictures on the walls; pictures of people with serious faces, dressed in old-fashioned clothes and whose eyes followed him as he walked past them.

He dug his hands into his trouser pockets and matched his step to that of his grown-up friend.

‘Did you know,’ he confided, ‘there’s a boy in the village whose dad is abroad in the Army and yesterday the postman brought him a big box of oranges, all the way from Cairo. Twenty-four , there were. Can you imagine having twenty-four oranges, all at once?’

‘I can’t, Arnie. I really can’t.’ Not for a long time had anyone been able to buy oranges – except perhaps one at a time and after queueing for it at the village shop. Nor could children like Arnie remember the joy of peeling a banana, for that particular fruit had disappeared completely at the very beginning of the war. ‘Twenty-four oranges, the lucky boy! Never mind, Arnie. Perhaps someone will send you oranges from abroad one day.’

‘Nah. Not me. Haven’t got a dad, see? Well, I have, but not an official one. Stands to reason, dunnit, when I’m called Bagley and Mam says me dad’s called Kellygodrottim. Glad I haven’t got a name like that. Think how they’d laugh at school if I was called Arnold William Kellygodrottim.’ He’d do without the oranges, thanks all the same.

‘Just think!’ Hester’s voice trembled on the edge of laughter. What a joy of a child this was. Small wonder Polly adored him. ‘But I’m afraid you won’t see the threshing team. The driver won’t set out with such a big machine until it’s properly light. It’ll be another half hour before it gets here.’

She reached the orchard gate then turned to watch him walk away, raising her hand to match his wave, thinking how cruel life could be when an unwanted, carelessly-conceived love child like Arnie could grow up so straight and strong and delightful.

And I couldn’t give you a boy, Martin; couldn’t give a living son to Ridings. Nor, when our babe died, could I try again.

I’m sorry, my love. Forgive me. I didn’t know. Believe me, I didn’t know …

The threshing team clanked into the yard on great, grinding, cast-iron wheels, spewing out coal-smoke, throwing mud in all directions.

‘ Good grief, ’ Kath gasped.

‘First time you’ve seen one?’ Jonty smiled.

It was. She stood still and wide-eyed, thinking so strange a contraption could only have come from an age that had known Stephenson’s Rocket. It was almost a steam-roller, yet with the look of an ancient steam train about it and it pulled a brightly painted contrivance behind it.

‘That’s the thresher,’ Jonty supplied, following her gaze. ‘They’ll back it up to the stack and the sheaves will be thrown down into it, into the drum.’

‘Y-yes.’ Kath frowned. ‘Does it work on electricity?’

‘Nothing quite so convenient.’ Jonty shrugged. ‘Look – see that big wheel on the engine beside the driver’s seat? It’s that wheel that connects by a belt to the thresher; and, roughly, is what drives it. And without blinding you with science,’ he laughed, ‘the straw comes out at one end, the wheat at the other and the chaff – the wheat husks, that is – drop down below it.’ He smiled again and his eyes, thick-lashed and blue, crinkled mischievously. ‘Got that?’

‘Yes. Well, I think so.’ My, but he was handsome. ‘You’ll let me down lightly, Jonty?’

‘I will. If you aren’t afraid of heights you can go on top of the stack with Marco. He’ll be feeding the sheaves down into the drum; you can keep them coming to him – okay?’

It wasn’t. All at once she was apprehensive, but she said she’d do her best – and thought how foolish she had been to worry about milking a cow, when, had she known about traction engines and threshing machines that day she volunteered for the Land Army, she’d have taken to her heels and run a mile!

‘We’ll be making a start soon, Kath. They’ve only to fix the belt, and then we’ll be away.’

‘What will Roz be doing?’

‘She’ll be seeing to the filling, most likely. There’s hooks at the back end of the thresher, for holding the wheat-sacks. Roz will watch them and tie them when they’re full; there’ll be a couple of big strong lads to hump them away.

‘Last time we threshed, Roz was on the chaff.’ Jonty grinned. ‘It’s a dirty job. The poor love was black all over by the end of the day. She didn’t speak to me for ages after.’

Kath laughed with him, biting back the words she longed to say; that if he truly cared for Roz, if he acknowledged what his eyes showed so plainly, then he would wait a while; be there if one day she should need him and the comfort of his safe, broad shoulders. She didn’t say them, though, because there was really no need, and anyway, it was no business of hers. But oh, if a man smiled at me the way Jonty smiled at Roz; if his eyes loved me the way his eyes loved her, Kath yearned, I’d be putty in his hands. If, she thought, dismissing such stupid thoughts, she were heart-whole and fancy-free. And not married to Barney, of course.

The thresher was belted-up to the traction engine, the drum rotated noisily. Beside it in the stackyard stood two carts; one for straw, the other to carry away the fat, full sacks of wheat. Roz stood to the rear, a pile of hessian sacks at her side and she waved to Kath who looked giddily down from the top of the stack.

‘Be careful,’ Marco warned. ‘Straw can be slippy. Be careful how you step.’

‘I will.’ Of course she would. ‘Tell me again? I just throw the wheat sheaves over to you and –’

‘That is so. And I shall cut the binding-twine, then throw them down, like so.’ Gravely, he mimed the operation. ‘It is nothing for worry. I show you how.’

The air was frosty and filled with scents of coal-smoke and dusty straw. Kath smiled at Flora Lyle who had come to help, and taken up her position beside Roz.