Page 40 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)
‘I wouldn’t mind one of them,’ Seb said. ‘Course, we do have a plain reaper that we use on the other fields, but this ’un is too small.’
‘Lord Lambert’s reaper-binder is drawn by a tractor,’ Burton said.
‘Horrible noisy thing!’ said Polly.
‘Well, you could have a horse-drawn reaper-binder,’ Burton said. ‘But it’s not as efficient. A tractor does a field four times faster.’
‘Horses compact the soil less,’ Polly countered.
‘And they make lovely manure for fertiliser. All a tractor makes is stinking fumes. Besides, you can’t put all these people out of work.
’ She waved a hand at the men and women following the scythe-men, binding and stooking – and the little girls following them, gleaning into their aprons.
The boys were too busy chasing mice and rabbits, wielding catapults and boasting about their prowess.
‘But what happens when the scythe-men get too old to work?’ Burton said.
‘There’ll be new young ones,’ Polly said.
‘Young men don’t want to learn reaping. They don’t want to work on the land.
They want to work in a nice clean office or factory, and come home at five thirty to a nice clean modern house and a nice little wife.
And at the weekend they want to go to the cinema, or a football match, or go for a spin in their nice little car and look at the countryside that someone else is tending.
’ Burton shook his head. ‘We’re becoming a nation of watchers instead of doers. ’
‘That’s right,’ Seb said, as if struck by the thought. ‘My ma used to play the piano of an evening, and my dad played the fiddle, and us kids’d all stand round and sing. Now folk listen to the wireless or play the gramophone.’
‘The war broke the mould,’ Burton said. ‘A generation left the land to fight. And the next generation has different interests. The old ways have to go.’ He cocked an eyebrow at Polly. ‘You know that. And you’ve always been keen to modernise the estate.’
‘This field is too small to be cut by machine,’ Polly said, rather than say she liked to watch the scythe-men and would be sorry to see the tradition die.
‘We ought to grub up the hedges and make the fields bigger,’ Burton said.
Polly thought of the roses and the honeysuckle and the robin’s song. ‘We won’t be doing that,’ she said firmly.
Seb laughed. ‘You looked just like your father then, Miss Polly. He was a fine master and a genial man, but his word was law, and that was all about it.’
‘I’m just doing my duty and warning you,’ Burton said, without rancour. ‘The time may come when you’ll have to embrace machinery because you can’t get any workers.’
‘They’ve started digging the footings in North Field,’ said Polly. ‘Once they’ve built the council estate, there’ll be a whole new pool of labour to draw from. They live on my land, what more natural than to work on it?’
Burton was about to say they already had jobs and would be no more likely to want farm work than anyone else, but conversation had to stop as an aeroplane grumbled overhead. A two-seater bi-plane, it was, flying low. Goggles flashed as the two inside looked down, then away.
‘That’s the other thing,’ Burton said, as the noise faded. ‘What if it comes to another war?’
The thought of Erich scorched across her mind.
She remembered one day, during the war, when she had come upon him mending a dry-stone wall, remembered his care and skill and his sure hands – the hands that had so lately caressed her.
She felt the sick, falling-away sensation of missing him, longing for him; and the hateful hopelessness of not being able to change the way things were.
‘If the men go off to fight,’ Burton was saying, ‘what will you do for labour then?’
Polly pulled herself back from the brink. ‘Land girls,’ she said briskly. ‘Like last time. But maybe there won’t be another war,’ she added, as James and Alec joined them.
‘I bet there will be,’ Alec piped up. ‘I’d like to go and fight. Bam-bam-bam.’ He hoisted an imaginary rifle to his shoulder and shot several enemy soldiers who had been creeping up on them.
‘If we have to fight Germany again—’ Seb began.
But James interrupted him. ‘You’ve got the wrong enemy. Russia is by far the greater threat. I’ve been to Russia. I’ve seen for myself what the Reds are like. We have to throw in with the Germans to stop them.’
Burton said, ‘It’s not even twenty years since the Armistice. Memories of what the Germans did are fresh and raw.’
James overrode him. ‘We can’t ignore the situation. Communism spreads like a poison. Look at Spain, look at France. The Reds won’t be satisfied until the whole world is enslaved by them. And the Germans are the only nation with the military strength to beat them. We have to have them on our side.’
Now Seb spoke. ‘Begging your pardon, Mr Morland, but the Huns killed all three of my brothers, and Matt Walton over at Huntsham, and I don’t know how many more.
You only got to look at all the names on the War Memorial.
And what I hear is they’re making guns and bombs as fast as they can.
Well, if the Germans start up again, we have to finish with them, once and for all, wipe them off the face of the earth.
And I’ll be ready. Any German that sets foot on my land, I’ll shoot him like a dog.
Begging your pardon, Miss Polly,’ he added with an apologetic glance at Alec, who was listening with his mouth open.
And he touched his forelock to her and walked off.
Polly watched Seb’s retreating figure, and thought How right Erich was.
They would never have accepted him . A weight settled in her as, finally, she accepted the truth.
Some mad, stubborn and unrepentant part of her that had kept hoping turned its face to the wall and died.
It was the end. She would never see him again.
James was saying, in an exasperated voice, ‘You see? This is just the sort of blinkered attitude we have to deal with. When the red flag goes up over Buckingham Palace, they’ll realise too late I was right.’
Alec stared at him intently, catching up. ‘I’ll fight the Reds, Uncle. And the Germans, too. I’ll fight them both.’
James pulled himself together, ruffled Alec’s hair and said, ‘I don’t suppose there’ll be any fighting of anybody. The diplomats’ll talk everybody out of it.’
Alec didn’t know what diplomats were, but he looked disappointed.