David Storey - Saville

‘Jack. Gordon.’ He got up slowly, lifting his scythe. He’d brought a thermos which he propped up by his bike. There was a smell of straw and grease from inside the shed.

The two men lay back beneath the tree.

‘No rest for the wicked,’ the taller one had said.

They set off to the field. Clouds of dust rose from their feet as they walked along. They climbed the field.

By mid-afternoon, working slowly, they’d reached the top.

‘There’ll be an hour or two of overtime tonight,’ the foreman said. He took out his watch which, since he’d removed his waist-coat, he’d transferred to the waistband of his trousers. ‘Are you all right for an hour or two?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘As long as you like.’

The foreman, throughout the day, had spoken little; when his back wasn’t stooped to the scythe he was sharpening the blade, or, his gaze half-abstracted, he’d be staring back, watching the sheaf he was fastening, then nodding his head.

Colin, as he worked, was adding up the money he’d earn. Eight hours on the first day would be seventy-two pence. Seventy-two pence were six shillings. If he worked overtime for an hour he’d make another ninepence, plus fourpence half-penny; if he worked overtime for two hours he’d make two shillings and threepence, bringing his wage for the day to over eight shillings. Even without overtime he’d calculated he could earn thirty-three shillings in a single week; it gave him a fresh energy the more he worked it out. He felt now he could work until it grew dark; once the mid-afternoon was passed the rest of the day had seemed downhill.

They worked till seven. It had taken them six hours of the afternoon and three hours of the morning to open up the field. He could hardly mount the bike when he got back to the sheds.

‘Eight o’clock tomorrow,’ the foreman said.

‘Don’t come too early, now,’ the bow-legged man had said. He and the bony man had laughed. They stood talking by the sheds while the foreman locked the door. Finally the older of the two set off across the fields and the other rode off on his bike towards the track.

Colin cycled after him. As he reached the wooden gate which opened to the road the foreman went past on his motor-bike: he waved to the bony man and set off towards the distant houses.

At each of the hills Colin got off to walk. It was well after eight when he got back home. He’d been away from the house for over thirteen hours. He leant the bike against the wall and staggered in.

Steven, in his pyjamas, was standing by the fire; his mother, with a pair of scissors, was cutting his nails.

‘Wherever have you been?’ she said, her mouth opening then as she saw his state.

He caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror above the sink, red, almost crimson, streaked with sweat; his hair and eyebrows were white with dust.

‘I’ll be all right when I’ve had a wash,’ he said.

‘But where have you been?’

‘We worked overtime,’ he said.

The touch of the water against his hands began to fade. He rubbed the soap against his arms; he rubbed his face; he rinsed his head beneath the tap.

‘Your meal’s been waiting for hours,’ his mother said.

‘Just put it on the table, then,’ he said.

‘Well,’ his mother said. ‘Are you going to be home at this time every night?’

‘Oh, I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Once I’ve worked in I’ll easily manage.’

They cut the field the following day. The foreman drove the tractor, Gordon, the bow-legged man, sitting on the binder with its tall metal lever, watching the cutting of the blade, the binding of the sheaves, their slow, rhythmical ejection from the side of the machine. Colin and the tall, bony man stooked behind. They covered six rows of sheaves between them, carrying them in pairs and setting them in the stooks, eight pairs to each, angled slightly inwards to prevent them falling.

‘Do you know what I’d do if I was in charge of this war?’ the bony man had said. ‘I’d get a lot of animals, infect them with cholera, rabies, dysentery, beriberi, and drop them all over Germany every night. You wouldn’t have to drop bombs, or anything, or have a thousand planes. You could go through the entire country in a week dropping down rats and mice on parachutes. Drop them near large towns, near rivers, and near farms, tha knows, at harvest-time.’

He gazed round him as if imagining some such incident taking place in the surrounding fields.

‘You could overrun the country inside a week. Tha’d have no opposition, tha knows, at all. They’d all be in hospital, or at home in bed. Hitler. There’d not be one of them fit to stand.’

Later, when they reached the corner of the field, he lit a cigarette.

‘Another thing I’d do, with these submarines. I’d drop an electric cable round their harbours at night, fastened up to the electricity, tha knows, with electric wires. And whenever one of them came out, or touched it, I’d switch it on. You’d see the buggers jump; they’d come up like freshboiled fish, tha knows: alive.’

The bony man worked slowly. Frequently he would pause, gazing round, looking over to the tractor and binder as it cut against the wall of corn, stooping casually, despite his height, to hoist the sheaves, bending and straightening, the movement scarcely perceptible.

‘You don’t want to work too hard, tha knows. They’ll still have to pay us if we’re here at ten tonight.’

They reached the bottom of the field: he could see into the copse. A pool of water lay in the shadow of the wind-blown trees; branches curled down beneath its surface. A dry dust rose from the sharp, cut-off stalks as they trudged between the rows of sheaves. A single row of stooks ran, parallel with the hedge, down one long side of the field.

They turned at the bottom. The tractor puffed slowly up the slope above them, stopping occasionally while the bow-legged man got down, cleared some obstruction from the teeth of the cutters, or rooted out some unfastened sheaf. Sometimes when the binder stopped all they could hear was the distant barking of a dog or the calling of some voice in the large house beyond the trees. It was usually at these moments that the bony man sat down in the shade of the hedge, lighting a cigarette, appearing for a moment to fall asleep, the cigarette smoking in his mouth, Colin working on, stooking the man’s sheaves as well his own, the bony man rising as the tractor started or reappeared over the crest of the slope.

A broad swathe now had been cut round the contour of the field. ‘How long to dinner, dost think?’ the bony man said. He had no watch; he’d brought his carrier bag to the field and intermittently, after they’d advanced some distance, he’d go back to retrieve it from beneath the hedge and place it some little distance farther on. ‘I make it thirty-five minutes’, he added, ‘by the sun. And I bet I’m correct within one or two minutes.’ He was continually watching the tractor now; each time it paused he raised his head, a sheaf in his hand, seeing whether the foreman was breaking off for lunch.

‘He’ll work through till one o’clock, will Tom. He doesn’t much care for time, tha knows. I hope old Gordon reminds him, or we’ll be stuck down here for hours.’

And yet, only moments later, the tractor stopped. The clatter subsided: the puffs of blue smoke had disappeared.

The bow-legged man was already moving off across the field; the foreman himself was stooping to the binder.

‘That’s it! That’s dinner!’ the bony man said.

He retrieved his carrier bag and, half-running, half-walking, started off towards the track.

Colin, more slowly, followed on behind. By the time he reached the yard the bow-legged man and the bony man were already stretched out beneath the tree. It was some twenty minutes later before the foreman appeared along the track, going into the shed, with a spanner in his hand, comparing it with several others, coming out, his canvas bag across his shoulder, setting himself down in the open door, the shape of his motorbike gleaming in the dark behind.