PART III: THYRZA Chapter 1

THAT autumn and winter there was a lot of talk in the papers about food. Wedged into news of the Ancre and Beaumont Hamel, the crumpling-up of Roumania under von Mackensen, and President Wilson’s Peace Note, came paragraphs and letters and articles on food and the ways of economising and producing it. The latter most troubled Harry, as he thought of the modest spring-sowings of Worge. If it was indeed true that the German U-boats were threatening the country’s wheat supply, might it not be as well to reclaim the old tillage of the Sunk Field or even break up grass-land in the high meadows by Bucksteep?

Harry did not often read the papers, getting all his news from the Daily Express poster which Mrs. Honey displayed outside the shop when the papers arrived at noon; but when paper-restrictions brought posters to an end, he went skimming through Mus’ Beatup’s Sussex News, and one day skimming was changed to plodding by a very solid article on wheat-production and the present needs.

In many ways it was a revelation to Harry. Though he had been a farm-boy all his life it had never struck him till then that grain-growing was of any importance to the nation, or imagined that the Worge harvests mattered outside Worge. The fields, the stock had been to him all so many means of livelihood, and the only motive of himself and his fellow-workers the negative one of [116] keeping Worge from the auctioneer’s. If he ever realised his part in the great adventure, it was only when he saw his duty to keep the place together for Tom to fight for. This was his newest and highest motive, and when he refused the call of distant woods, broke with the Brownbread rat-and-sparrow club, and paid no more than a business visit to Senlac Fair, it was so that Tom’s sacrifice should not be in vain. But here was a chap making out that a farmer was very nearly as important as a soldier, and that it was on the wheat-fields of England as well as on the battlefields of France that the war would be won....

After this, Harry always read the food-supply news, and pondered it. Was it indeed true that the war which was being waged with such gallantry and fortitude abroad might be lost at home? For the first time he had a personal interest in the struggle, apart from the interest he felt through Tom. Hitherto the war had meant nothing to him, because he had thought he meant nothing to the war—he was too young to be a soldier, probably always would be, since everyone said that peace would come next year. All he had had of warfare was the distant throb and grumble of guns a hundred miles away—not even a prowling Taube or lost Zeppelin had visited the country within the Four Roads. First the lighting order, then the liquor control, then the Conscription Act—only thus and indirectly had the war touched him, requiring of him merely a passive part. But now he saw that he also might take his active share, and the realisation set fire to his clay.

The winter was a bad one—bitterly cold, with thick green ice on the ponds, and a skimming of hard snow on the fields, where the soil was like iron. The marshes of Horse Eye were sheeted with a frozen overflow, and the wind that rasped and whiffled from the east, stung [117] the skin like wire, and piercing the cracks of barns, made the stalled cattle shiver and stamp. There was little work on the farm, though Harry had done his best to fulfil Tom’s injunctions, and had carted his manure and turned a strong furrow to the frost. The lambing had been got through somehow—but two ewes and three or four lambs had died, as they would never have done if Tom had been there. At every turn Harry was faced by his own inexperience, and learned only at the price of many disappointments and much humiliation.

But he was the type which failure only makes dogged, and his unsuccessful winter helped his new sense of the country’s need in making him plan daringly for the spring. He resolved that his apprenticeship should not last beyond the winter—it was his own fault that it had lasted so long—and in March he would get to business, and start his scheming for doubling the grain acreage of the farm.

There were several acres of old tillage to be reclaimed, and Harry was young and daring and amateurish enough to contemplate also breaking up grass-land. He would of course have to consult his father first. Mus’ Beatup had spent a sorry winter, “kipping the coald out” at the Rifle Volunteer. The slackness of farm work, the cold and discomfort of the weather, the growing unpalatableness of his meals, all combined for worse results than usual, and by the time of the keen wintry spring there was no denying that a good slice of both his physical and mental vigour had been eaten away. However, he was still the nominal head of the farm, and must be consulted—Tom would have had it so. Unfortunately, Harry chose the wrong day. Mus’ Beatup was sober, but suffering from an internal chill as a result of having lain for an hour in the frozen slush a couple of nights ago, before Nimrod the watch-dog found him and brought Harry out [118] with his frantic barks. To-day he sat by the fire, shuddering and muttering to himself, drinking a cup of hot cocoa and swearing at his wife because there was no sugar in it.

“I can’t git none,” wailed Mrs. Beatup. “I tried at the Shop, and Nell tried in Brownbread Street, and Ivy’s tried in Dallington, and Harry asked when he wur over at Senlac market....”

“And have you tried Rushlake Green and Punnetts Town and Three Cups Corner and Heathfield and Hellinglye and Hailsham? You try a bit further afore you dare to give me this stuff.”

“But there aun’t none in the whole country—so I’ve heard tell.”

“Maybe. Reckon Govunmunt’s got it all, saum as they’ve got all the beer and the spirits. They’ve got pounds and pounds of it, those there Cabinick Ministers, and eat it for breakfast and dinner and tea. I tell you I’m dog-sick of this war, and I’m hemmed if I move another step to help a Govunmunt as taakes fust our beer and then our boys, and then our sugar”—and Mus’ Beatup spat dramatically into the fire, as if it were Whitehall.

The moment was not propitious, but Harry had to consider the weather, which showed possibilities that must be made use of at once. Mus’ Beatup listened wearily to his suggestions.

“Oh, it’s more wheat as they want, is it? They’re going to take that next.... Reclaim the oald tillage? Wot did we let it go fallow fur, if it wurn’t cos it dudn’t pay the labour?... Break up the grass-land? You’ll be asking to plough the kitchen floor next.”

[119]

“If we doan’t do summat, I reckon we’ll be maade to.”

“Reckon we will—saum as we wur maade to give up Tom. And they say this country’s fighting Prussian tyranny.”

“Well, faather, if we doan’t grow more corn we’ll lose the war. I wur reading in the paapers as all our corn and wheat used to come from furrin parts, but now, wud ships wanted to carry soldiers and them hemmed U-boats spannelling around....”

“You talk lik the Sussex News. Wot d’you want to go vrothering about them things fur? You do your work and doan’t go roving.”

“Faather, I aun’t bin roving all this winter.”

“No, you aun’t—that’s a good lad, fur sartain sure.”

“And if you let me do this job, I promise I’ll stick to it and pull it through.”

“You might as well chuck your money into the pond as spend it on grain-growing nowadays.”

“Not wud all these new arrangements the Govunmunt’s maade ... guaranteed prices and all. Oh, faather, let me try as I said. I want to do my bit saum as Tom.”

“Seemingly your bit’s to land Worge at the auctioneer’s. Howsumdever, do wot you lik—I’m ill and helpless and oald. I can’t stop you. Now adone do wud all this vrotherification of a poor sick man, and ask mother to let me have a spoonful of syrup in this nasty muck.”