David Storey - Saville

Yet later, as they walked back to the sheds, he added, ‘As it is, we could have done with you staying on last night. We’ve another field, tha knows, to cut tomorrow. We mu’n stay behind and oppen out.’

Yet after lunch Colin and the bony man were working in the field alone: the foreman and Gordon had set off to the second field. Relieved of supervision, the bony man spent longer spells beneath the hedge, stepping out of its shade at intervals, quickening the pace when he saw the comparatively few that, working alone, Colin himself had done.

‘They’ll expect us, you know, to get more on than this.’

The intervals of moving up and down the field got shorter; more than half of it was stooked. The heat, in the centre, was greater than it was on the track or working round the edge, the ground dustier, the scent of the straw more overpowering. His clothes were sodden now with sweat. After their first hardening, his hands had begun to bleed again.

A group of boys had come to play in the copse at the foot of the hill. He’d seen them earlier, coming down the track from the direction of the house beyond the trees; they were carrying a dinghy which, after they’d raised it over the hedge at the bottom of the field, they lowered on to the pond. For an hour he heard their cries, seeing the flashing of the water: splashed columns of it were sprayed up at intervals beneath the trees. Finally, when he and the bony man had reached the hedge, he glanced across.

A small island stood in the centre of the pond: it was overgrown with brambles. A large nest was built near the water’s edge. There was a smell of decay from the copse itself.

The boys were paddling the dinghy towards the island; there were three of them, two in costumes, one of whom, as Colin watched, plunged into the water and, to the shouts of the other two, began to push the dinghy vigorously before him, spraying the two still in the boat.

One of them, in shirt sleeves and shorts, he recognized as Stafford; he was standing in the middle of the dinghy directing the other boy who, bare-chested, was fanning the oar ineffectually at the water.

‘To your left. Left,’ Stafford called to the boy, who was spraying them with his feet behind.

They scrambled ashore as the dinghy reached the bank, Stafford leaning up to grasp a branch. He held the boat while the other boy climbed out. The third figure, still in the water, was slowly clambering to his feet: black mud stains marked his shoulders.

Stafford, releasing the branch and taking the paddle, pushed off the dinghy into the middle of the pond.

‘Ay! Neville,’ the other two had said. ‘ Ay, Neville ,’ they called, ‘come back.’

Stafford leaned on the oar, still standing. His laughter echoed beneath the branches of the copse.

‘Ay! You rotter,’ the two boys called.

The whiteness of their legs and bodies showed up against the darkness of the trees behind.

‘Ay, Neville. Bring it back.’

Stafford pushed the oar into the pond, found the bottom, and pushed the dinghy on.

‘Ay, Neville.’

The boat rocked with the momentum of Stafford’s laughter. The two boys began flinging spray across.

‘Ay, Nev. Bring it back.’

Stafford shook his head, kneeling in the boat, still laughing…

‘It’s too muddy to get back,’ the boys had said.

‘Swim, then,’ Stafford said.

‘It’s too shallow,’ one of the boys had said.

Stafford got up; he wiped his eyes.

‘Go on, you rotter: bring it back.’

‘Come and fetch it.’

‘Go on, Nev: be a sport,’ they said.

‘How much is it worth?’ he said.

‘How much do you want?’

‘How much have you got?’

‘Go on: we’ve got nothing.’ They gestured at their trunks.

Stafford, having reached the bank, had sat down by the boat.

‘Go on, Nev. Be a sport.’

Perhaps Colin had moved, or one of the two boys on the island had glanced across.

Stafford turned; for a moment he gazed up, confused. He shielded his eyes.

‘Hi,’ Colin said. He nodded his head.

Still confused, Stafford got up; the two boys on the island had called again.

‘Who is it, Nev? Come on, then, bring it back.’

‘Oh, it’s you, then,’ Stafford said, his voice quiet now and suddenly flat. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he added.

‘I’m working,’ he said. He gestured to the field behind.

‘What at?’

He gestured to the field again.

‘Stooking,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘Money.’

Stafford turned to the boat; he scarcely glanced at the field at all.

‘Are you working, then?’

He nodded his head.

‘I’ll see you, then.’ He climbed into the boat. He pushed it off.

From the field, the bony man had called: the car, in a cloud of dust, was bouncing along the track from the direction of the sheds.

He went back across the field and was already stooking, stooping to the sheaves, by the time the car pulled up and the farmer, with the foreman and the bow-legged man, climbed out.

They worked into the evening; the farmer stooked as well. At six o’clock he went to the car and got out a flask of tea. They sat in the shade of the hedge, drinking the tea from metal mugs and eating sandwiches which he’d also brought.

Earlier, shortly after the arrival of the car, Stafford and the two boys had emerged from the edge of the copse, carrying the boat between them. They’d glanced over to where he and the four men worked, Stafford walking some distance ahead, the two boys gazing over, Stafford scarcely glancing once he’d reached the track. He disappeared beneath the trees in the direction of the house, the two boys, white-skinned against the shadows, labouring to lift the boat across the fence. ‘Nev? Nev,’ he heard them call.

It was growing dark by the time he got back home. The bike had no lamp; he cycled in the coolness, his eyes half-closed. A new momentum had taken over his life. All he could think of now were the lines of stooks, the glimpse he’d had, in the half-darkness, of the field they would work the following day, the stooking of the first field now completed; having washed off the sweat and dust, he went to bed, brushing aside his mother’s complaints, his father’s questions.

He sank down in a daze and fell asleep.

He worked for seven weeks at the farm; eight fields were opened up, cut, stooked: men from another farm came with a red-painted thresher driven by a tractor with a fly-wheel as large as the rear wheels themselves. Once he saw the two boys who’d been wearing costumes cycling along the track that led from the large house past the sheds to the near-by road; they gave no sign; both had auburn hair and whistled cheerfully to one another as they pedalled past. On other days occasionally, he could hear their shouts coming from beyond the trees that surrounded the house.

The corn was threshed; at the end of the seventh week, late on Saturday after working overtime, the farmer told him he wouldn’t be needed again.

‘Not that I couldn’t use you, mind. But I’ve no more fields to cut round here.’

He gave him his money as he left the field.

The following day he set off on the bike again; he visited the farms he’d been to before. He found new ones farther afield, but late that evening, cycling home, he’d passed a field only a few miles from the village where a tractor and binder were working with no one stooking, and he had gone to the farm building a few hundred yards away and got a job to start the following day.

The farm stood at the foot of a hill; a stream ran past its door; a foot-bridge led across the stream to the farmhouse itself: the farmer’s name was also Smith.

‘Tha mu’n be on thy own,’ he said, ‘unless I can get som’body in by tomorrow. I’ve two fields cutting and nob’dy to stook,’ and yet, the next morning, when he started work, two men in dark brown uniforms were standing by the gate: one was tall and thin, with long, black hair, the other small and broad-shouldered, with blond hair cut short, and colourless eyes.