Seedtime and Harvest by Mary E. Pearce

Author:Mary E. Pearce [Pearce, Mary E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family Saga, Romance, 1940s, English countryside, nostalgia, rural, love and marriage, country life
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Family Saga)
Published: 2018-05-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

That winter was very wet. Rain fell for weeks on end and the steep farm track ran like a stream. Early in the new year gales ripped half the tiles from the barn roof and one of the old sheds collapsed.

‘There’ll be no lack of jobs for me to do when the weather lets up,’ Charlie said.

At the garage in Scampton, rain got into the oil-sump, so that oil and water overflowed, flooding the whole of the garage yard and running into the roadway. Charlie and the other men were kept busy all day with brooms, trying to prevent the oil and water from flooding into the repair-shop, and Frank Fleming ran to and fro, almost beside himself with rage. Because of the bad state of the yard, motorists were keeping away and he was losing petrol sales, and then, to complete his misery, the village policeman called on him, threatening him with a summons for fouling the road and causing danger to passing traffic.

Fleming’s bad temper lasted for days. Even when the yard had been cleared and work was back to normal again he still found fault with everything and one of his chief grievances was the repair-shop stove.

‘If you was to do some work for a change, you wouldn’t have time to feel cold!’ he would say, and he grudged every can of coke that was burnt. ‘If you had to buy that coke yourselves, you wouldn’t be so free with it!’

One day George Cressy, arriving at the garage soaked to the skin, stood by the stove drying himself. Fleming came in and saw him there.

‘I thought you Red Indians was supposed to be tough! But you’re as much of a molly-coddle as them two palefaces there!’

George Cressy looked at him, his face impassive, his eyes like grey ice.

‘You don’t believe I’m an Indian?’

‘Do I hell!’ Fleming said.

‘One of these days I’ll prove it to you.’

‘You needn’t bother!’ Fleming said.

The next morning George arrived with terrible burn-marks on his face: two horizontal lines on his forehead and two on each cheek: deeply scored, an ugly red, stretching and puckering the skin.

‘Good God!’ Jerry exclaimed. ‘Whatever have you done to yourself?’

‘I burnt myself with a hot poker, that’s what I done,’ George said, and looked around, pleased with himself, as the three other men stared at him. ‘In front of the mirror, at home last night, after my mum and dad was in bed.’

‘Christ!’ Charlie said, wincing, appalled. ‘What made you do a thing like that?’

‘I wanted to test myself,’ George said. ‘There ent many men around here who could burn themselves on the face like that and never once cry out with the pain.’

Fleming eyed him in contempt.

‘Only an Indian, I suppose?’

‘You couldn’t do it. I’m damned sure of that.’

‘Too bloody right, I couldn’t, by God! I’m not tenpence short, my lad!’ Fleming flung away from him and began to slide back the big garage door. ‘You get a broom and sweep this floor and not so

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