Jim Crace - Harvest

I am excused, I think, for wondering if I am the only one alive this afternoon with no other living soul who wants to cling to me, no other soul who’ll let me dampen her. The day has ended and the light is snuffed. I’m left to trudge into the final evening with nobody to loop their soaking hand through mine. And no one there to lift their hats, as our traditions say they must, when brought on by chaff and damp I cannot help but sneeze, an unintended blessing for the field. But I’d be lying if I said I felt as dark and gloomy as the clouds. I think I’m thrilled in some strange way. The plowing’s done. The seed is spread. The weather is reminding me that, rain or shine, the earth abides, the land endures, the soil will persevere forever and a day. Its smell is pungent and high-seasoned. This is happiness.

Y PLOWMAN’S HAPPINESS DID NOT survive the night. Once it was safely dark and the storm had very nearly passed, I stepped out of Kitty Gosse’s home hoping to catch a wink of candlelight or hear the knot and knit of voices — the Beldam couple reunited thanks only to my own leniency and maybe ready now to show some gratitude. I could not imagine they’d be hard to find. They surely would have slept indoors, somewhere in our row of cottages and within earshot of my own refuge. Why would they not have slept indoors? They must have known that here was now an abandoned spot and it was safe to help themselves to any bed they found. I’d sniff them out. I would be truly neighborly, and call on them. Surely I deserved their company.

What moonlight found passage through the clouds misled me once or twice with its glints of silver catching on the puddles or in the rain damps on the roofs. I took them briefly as a sign of life. But candlelight is warmer and more intimate than any moonlight. It will not send a shiver down your spine as these cold glisters did. Orange was the color I was looking for. I ventured for fifty steps or so along the muddied lane, hoping but not quite expecting to discover the Beldams. But, even though I harked my neck and ears about as alertly as any hunting owl, I could not make out any whispered words or catch the nighttime mutter of a lovers’ busy bed.

I was both sorry and relieved to find no ducking candlelight. What would I have done if, when I discovered the glow of household flame or caught the cloying whiff of melting wax, I also heard her crying out with … let me call it gladness? I do not want to think I would have crept up like a cat outside the chicken coup and spied on them. I’d rather imagine myself as their good friend, their warmhearted visitor, wanting nothing from them but some friendliness. So I hope I would have stood a respectful distance from their door and simply called out my name, declared myself to them. “It’s only Walter, come to talk.” It’s only Walter, come to make amends. It’s only Walter, come to share your oval den of candlelight and breathe the warm air of your room. I sorely needed fellowship.

I found no fellowship. I couldn’t see or hear a trace of them. A leather pot would be my only bedmate for the night. Kitty Gosse always had a good supply of greenish barley ale. “I find it beneficial,” she explained. Certainly, she slept on it and woke on it whenever I spent the night with her, and must have done the same when I wasn’t there. It dampened down the sorrows of her widowhood, she claimed, though if anything she was more dampened down by it when Fowler Gosse was still alive. She’s always had a loyal thirst, that woman. A single pot has usually been enough for me. I am reluctant to get drunk. I wasn’t born to it. But last night, after I failed to find my only neighbors, I chased off my own sorrows with enough ale, as we say, to drown a bag of puppies in. For whom should I stay sober, and for what?

The first two pots were cheering companions, though not as fortifying as I’d wanted. I think I expected to take extra courage from the ale, a courage greater than a plowman’s, anyway. I was hoping that my animal response would not be goat’s, or pig’s, or dog’s. I don’t need drink to make me lecherous, or obdurate, or even barking mad. No, I wanted to be as drunk as a bull and ready for a brawl, ready to be strong and reckless. Ready for today. I persevered, heroically, with widow Gosse’s ale. I do not think I much enjoyed the taste, or the leaden feeling in my arms and legs that it produced so rapidly, but I did enjoy the loosening of my anxieties. The next two pots of ale left me more spirited, as I’d hoped, but also more bemused and fanciful. I conjured up some company for myself. I invented visitors. They came up to the cottage door and knocked. I welcomed them, out loud, the fulsome host. But then, of late, I’ve done that often, when I haven’t had even a sniff of ale. A widower will first talk to himself, then — tired of that — he’ll have a noisy conversation with a candle flame or with the shifting shadows in his room, which he persuades himself are family.

Last night, the flames and shadows were those few men and women I most wanted to embrace. I imagined taking this reverie of friends down to the plow-scarred field at first light so that they could inspect my labors, and the evidence of my boldness and my disobedience. I lined them up, my seven sober witnesses. I stood them at the end of Kitty Gosse’s bed. Mr. Quill was soundless, shadowy. He was the bravest of us all. I’d prove to him that I could be daring too. The widow herself was there, of course. She always said she thought I was a cautious man. She counted me a civil owl, too quick to hoot, too scared to show my talons to the world. Well, she would see my talons soon and how I’d scratched a trench into the soil. Beside her, looking down at the back of his stubby, how- to hands, still avoiding my glance, was neighbor John. I’ll not forget him pulling back away from me the last time he came to my cottage door. I flush even to think of it. “Lord help you, Walt, if you’re deceiving us,” he’d said. “Lord help you, John, if you believe I would,” was my reply. Now he would see how defiant I could be on his behalf. Then came Master Kent, my milk cousin. Again he fixed me with the briefest show of eyes, as wide and white as eyes can be. They were asking, “Have you made the land ours again?” The Beldams nodded their encouragement. They trusted me. “You are the man who holds the sword,” the husband said. The woman pulled aside the velvet shawl and showed her wide-cheeked, thin-lipped face, her button nose, her belladonna eyes. Nothing ever frightened her. And finally my thrush was there, my Cecily, full-throated and alive again. I had forgotten what a plump and honeyed creature she could be and how light a voice she had. “Walter, Walter, make me proud of you,” she said.

I lifted my fifth pot and toasted all of them. We were the best of friends. I should have stopped the drinking there, while I had friends, while there was still some singing in the ale. Two further pots provided only tears — and anger too. The final pot was like a cudgel to the head. I would have dropped asleep at once if I hadn’t had to go outside to clear both my bladder and my gut. That sobered me a bit. The night air helped. I cannot say, though, that my head had cleared or that my feet were no longer tangled. But I was soon unruffled enough to listen once again, between the heaving spasms of my drunkenness, for any human sounds, other than the voices I’d just invented for myself and the usual mouthings of the stars. There were none, of course. Whatever courage I’d discovered briefly in drink had by now been almost entirely gagged and pissed into the once sweet-smelling garden, and I no longer could pretend to be the hero of the field. I was too wretched for a hero of the field. I could hardly stand, indeed, and either had to sleep among the ghosts of Fowler Gosse’s double-marigolds and thyme or take my spinning head back to its pillow in the room. Now my seven witnesses crowding at the far end of the bed were mocking me. Is that the only stand you’ll take against the Jordans and their sheep? they asked. Is that your fiercest riot and unrest, to put a pair of dumb beasts to the plow and mark your outrage on a field? Our enemies will quake at that, your knee-deep furrow and your knee-high ridge. Those armies will retreat at that. What next? Will you perhaps cut back some weeds or fix a fence to spread more fear into the hearts of those who do not wish our village to survive? Only a townsman could be so timid, Walter Thirsk, and still mistake it for rebellion.