On the Black Hil by Bruce Chatwin

Author:Bruce Chatwin [Chatwin, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143119067
Amazon: 0143119060
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2011-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

Without the money from the coffins, Aggie no longer had enough to keep a ‘nice house’ and, after scouring round for other sources of income, hit on the idea of boarding unwanted children.

The first of her ‘rescues’ was a baby girl called Sarah, whose mother, the miller’s wife at Brynarian, had been seduced by a seasonal shearer. The miller had refused to rear the child under his own roof, but offered Ł2 a week for her upkeep. This arrangement brought in Aggie a clear profit of Ł1 and, on the strength of it, she took in two more illegitimates - Brenda and Lizzie - and, in this way, maintained her standards. The tea-caddy was full. They ate pickled lamb once a week. She bought a new white linen tablecloth, and a tin of pineapple chunks sat proudly on the Sunday tea-table. As for Jim, he lorded it over his female brood, shirked work, and would sit on the hillside playing his penny whistle to the whinchats and wheatears.

He hated to see any creature in pain; and if he found a rabbit in a snare, or a gull with a broken wing, he’d carry it home and bind the wound with a bandage, or the wing with a splint of twigs. Sometimes, there’d be several birds and animals festering in boxes by the fire; and when one of them died, he’d say, ‘Poor ol’ boy! An’ I dug a hole an’ put ‘im in the ground.’

For years he went on harping about the war, and had the habit of slipping down to The Vision to hector the Jones twins.

They were scything one sunset in their shirtsleeves, when Jim limped up and launched into his usual harangue: ‘An’ them tanks I’m a-tellin’ yer! Baroom! … Baroom!’ The twins went on scything, stooping occasionally to whet their blades and, when a fly blew into Benjamin’s mouth, he spat it out:

‘Aagh! Them pithering flies!’

Of Jim they took no notice and he ended up losing his temper: ‘An’ you? You’d a-lasted a fraction of a second in that war. An’ you’d a farm to fight for! An’ I … I’d only me own skin to save!’

Since the day of the peace celebrations, the twins’ world had

contracted to a few square miles, bounded on one side by Maesyfelin Chapel and on the other by the Black Hill: both Rhulen and Lurkenhope now lay on enemy soil. Deliberately, as if reaching back to the innocence of early childhood, they turned away from the modern age; and though the neighbours invested in new farm machinery, they persuaded their father not to waste his money. They shovelled muck on to the fields. They broadcast seed from a basketwork ‘lip’. They used the old binder, the old single-furrow plough, and even did their threshing with a flail. Yet, as Amos was forced to admit, the hedges had never been neater, the grass greener, the animals healthier* The farm even made money. He had only to set foot in the bank for the manager to slip round the counter, and shake his hand.

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