A Country Wife by Lucy Pinney

Author:Lucy Pinney
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409004240
Publisher: Ebury Press

Chapter Fourteen

Story told by a local engineer to illustrate the intriguing grimness of our recent agricultural past: ‘In the 1940s, the first self-propelling combine harvesters came over from Canada. Back then, when a mechanic arrived to service a combine, farmers would ask him to hold out his hands. The threshing cylinder often jammed on damp English crops, and when you reached in to free it it tended to slice off your index finger. So anyone with a finger missing was an expert.’

There was still a blue haze over the fields, but it was obvious the day was going to be hot. The cut grass in the hayfield had bleached silver on the very top, but underneath it was pale green and smelt tobaccoey. Here and there, in among the fluffy heaps waiting to be shaken again, were heavy, slimy green lumps of unturned cut grass. There was a fault in the mechanism of the ancient tedder we were using, and it kept leaving these. They’d never dry properly unless they were individually pulled out with pitchforks.

I kicked one. Deep inside, in the wettest part, was a green frog the size of my fingernail. As I walked over to the water-trough with it I passed a ring of blackened shells. When the field had been cut by the local contractor a week ago it had been a whole pheasant’s nest, on the point of hatching, each shell neatly sliced in half by the knife of the grass-cutter. I showed it to the contractor, and he said it often happened. Once the mother pheasant didn’t flee in time and he cut her, too. Another time, when he was making silage, he killed a fawn. He was aware there was one about, because he kept seeing a red deer hind agitatedly flitting up and down beside the fence while he worked, but he never felt a bump. And it was only when he got off the tractor to eat his lunch in the shade that he found the fawn, lying as if asleep in a pool of darkening blood.

When I’d watched the frog swim safely into a fringe of weed on the side of the trough, I climbed the fence and walked down to where the horses were still asleep. They were lying flat out under the walnut tree, and I could hear Picasso snoring. Holbein heard me coming, and lifted his head, but Picasso didn’t, and I managed to slip right on to his back and put my arms round his neck before he woke up. He felt warm and muscular, and smelt stalliony, his odour concentrated by sleep. It had a musky base-note – a bit like Charlie’s armpits when he’d been working – and on top of that a bitter, manure-like tang. He snorted, and began to struggle upright, so I slipped off again, not wanting to bother him too much. It was always surprising to me, even after all these years, how late in the morning farm animals liked to sleep.

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