Читать книгу The Wind that Shakes the Barley - James William Barke - Страница 14

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The first six years of the lease of Mount Oliphant wore in and Robin reached his thirteenth year. He had long been doing a man’s work and mortgaging a man’s strength in the process.

He was weary with hard back-breaking toil: already his thin growing body was warping itself to the labour of the plough-stilts. He was overworked and under-nourished. His step was slow. For too long had he dragged himself up and down the wet heavy rigs. Even the straw rope with which he bound his legs did little to protect him from the seeping dampness. The ill-tanned porous leather of his cheap brogans soon became spongy and his feet were never dry. The loosely woven hoddin grey, the work of old Betty or his mother, hung about his shoulders; and for the most part it hung damp on his bones unless the wind blew it dry.

His face was gaunt and pale. His black hair was lank and lustreless. It was a face pinched with poverty, tensed with strain and drawn with the draining of adolescent upsurging. Puberty had assaulted him with unusual violence. Adolescence battled in his blood with all the ardour of a battle of attrition.

But in that pale face were eyes that glowed and smouldered; eyes that fascinated and repelled; eyes that exposed a quivering sensitivity to a brutal world; eyes shielded with a smoke-film of suffering; eyes into which no mother could look without being seared with sorrow....

His mother did not look into his eyes: she lacked that nerve-tautened courage; and his father had looked too long into the eyes of pitiless pain to know any quickening response.

Sometimes William held the plough-stilts, sometimes Robin. They took turns in leading the team of four hardy ponies. Gilbert, with a long pointed stick, acted as gaudsman, prodding the beasts to even and steady effort.

The plough was heavy and cumbersome yet it cut but a shallow furrow in the thin stony soil.

Opening up and ploughing a new rig was strenuous labour. Leading the team, Robin watched for the bigger boulders. When he saw one in the plough’s path he halted the ponies, took the spade from his shoulder, dug out the obstruction and rolled it to the edge of the adjoining bawk.

Sometimes he would need the assistance of his father and Gilbert to wrestle and lever the boulder out of the clay. Sometimes the water would lie in great puddles and he would have to squelch through it up past his ankles or endeavour, if the lie of the ground permitted, to dig a trench so that it might drain away.

It was slow work, laboriously heavy, and they were always late with their ploughing, always trying to catch up on bad weather and work that had fallen behind.

Cold, wet and hungry, with strained muscles and over-taxed heart, Robin would trail himself home in the evenings, sup a thin watery gruel, munch a dry bannock and then crawl up to his bed, worn out and exhausted.

If he sat by the ingle his head would nod and he would drop off to sleep, only to waken stiff and sore.

And like as not he would start up in the night with a pain at his heart, a throbbing in his head and an ache in every joint.

Then his heart would flutter and palpitate and miss an odd beat. Cold sweat would break on his brow and fear would clutch at his heart.

He would crawl out of bed, taking care not to disturb Gilbert, and grope for the edge of the water tub. He would plunge his head into the icy water, gasping and spluttering.

This cold water cure had been recommended by John Tennant in Laigh Corton; and though he admitted it was an old cure he assured them it was effective for a wide variety of complaints and a certain remedy for heart flutterings and dizziness.

When he had rubbed his head dry, Robin would crawl under the blanket again; but fearful of lying down in case the palpitations resumed, he would fall asleep with his head and shoulders resting against the bed board.

And always the cold dawn came too soon, long before his overstrained body was rested; and he would have to drag himself on to the floor, sleep still heavy in his eyes.

Long before the break in his lease William Burns realised that his rachle of seventy stony acres was a ruinous bargain and that he would be better quit of it.

But he realised that without capital it was impossible to quit. He had come to the Mount with three children, Robin, Gilbert and Agnes. Now he had to provide for the additional wants of Annabella and William. To make matters more difficult, Agnes was again pregnant.

Seventy bare acres could not sustain his family. To have any success with farming he would require as many acres again. Burdened with debt how was he to succeed? And how was he to come by the lease of a larger place? There was only one possible remedy: to find someone who would sub-let the Mount from him. But though he made many inquiries he found nobody foolish enough to make him an offer.

The alternative remained. He could get rid of Mount Oliphant, realise what money he could, send Robin and Gilbert out to service and then sell his labour to some wealthy farmer who might be induced to pay him a shilling or two above the six or seven pounds of a land worker’s yearly wage.

But he had been determined ever since he left his father’s house that he would never subject his own family to such an ordeal. If he sent Robin and Gilbert out to service that would be the end of their prospects for education and advancement. He would endure much before he would break up his family.

He discussed the matter with Agnes.

“That is the position, Agnes. I have weighed it up from every angle and I can see no hope other than to renew the lease.”

“But surely, William, there must be some other road for us. You ken fine if you continue working so hard you’ll kill yourself.”

“The place could hardly be worse... And yet Robin is growing up a strong boy and every year is making him stronger: he is a willing lad and a clever lad and together we might just manage. Gilbert’s coming on behind him...”

Agnes was bitterly disappointed. She knew what farms like Mount Oliphant could yield; knew something of the slavery that poor soil demanded; knew her husband was not of the strongest and that Robin was no substitute for a grown man. In her heart she feared the worst. But experience had taught her that William was an extraordinary man who could do things ordinary men could not do. There was just the chance he might yet make something out of the ruin of Mount Oliphant.

Robin and Gilbert discussed the matter between themselves and came to the conclusion that their father was right. Neither of them wanted to be thrown out into the world. However bad Mount Oliphant might be it could not be worse than service.

Robin was deeply hurt to see how much his father suffered and how much anxiety he was given over the business. So bitter did he become that he overflowed with bitterness against all those who were comfortable and well-off. He knew of no one who worked so hard and diligently as his father: he knew of no one so harshly ground between the millstones of poverty and want. In his bitterness he watched the beggars going from door to door with their meal pokes. The beggars and their lean weather-beaten women were doubtless poor; but they didn’t seem to be weighed down with the cares of the world. Their ragged brats seemed happy enough to be sometimes whistling as they scampered down the dusty loaning...

Often he envied the beggars their freedom from want and their freedom from the brutality of toil...