South Riding (61 page)

It was one of those January days which mock the summer.

Mr. Huggins, looking up, smiled with pleasure.

“Pretty things, eh?”

“When you don’t think what they’re for,” growled Spurling.

He and his employer were carting pebbles from the beach below Maythorpe for the footpaths in the Esplanade Gardens, and both men were bare-armed in working overalls.

Spurling annoyed Huggins. The grizzled taciturn fellow spoke too little, but when he did open his mouth, his intention was invariably to put his employer in the wrong. After all, Huggins, not Spurling, was the councillor and lay preacher; it was his business, not his labourer’s, to see hidden moral meanings, political significance, in slums or aeroplanes. He knew what Spurling meant. He had lived through air raids even if he had not, like Spurling, been to Flanders. He was not unaware of political evils—poverty, injustice, war. He spoke about them. Why, only last Sunday in South Street Wesleyan Church at Yarrold, he had begun a series of talks on “Liberty—what do we mean, and what does God mean?” And had dealt in grand generalisations with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and God, explaining their plans for the world with equal confidence.

He had done his duty and was, he thought, at liberty now to surrender himself to the pleasure of the wide level shore, the tossing waves, the gulls and planes blowing together about the windy sky. He had earned, he considered, the right to enjoy them all.

For in these days he had regained assurance. He had returned again to the blessed protection of the Living God and felt purified and happy. He had repented of his sins and been forgiven. Nellie was his loving wife again. Bessy and Reg had moved at last to London. The council had accepted the principle of a joint building scheme with Kingsport.

Time had left behind the old dark year of 1933; leaving Huggins a humbler but wiser man, with a more profound understanding of sinners and their route from the valley of humiliation into the green pastures of righteousness. 1934 was to be Annus Mirabilis for the South Riding.

In February the rates would go up a bit; that was essential. All the worse for those councillors who, like Carne and Gryson, stood only for cheese-paring economy. Then in March the elections would take place, and from what Huggins had seen, enough new blood would come on to the council to make the Town Planning Scheme at last a certainty. Astell had been working, speaking, canvassing, lobbying; Snaith had pushed ahead and secured his hospital fund: Miss Burton had worked up her High School governors till they were almost as discontented as she with her makeshift buildings. As for himself, he, Huggins, had sold out his life insurance and bought for £400 a nice little strip of land in Tadman’s name, just below Drew’s, along Leame Ferry Waste. Drew had filled the sheds there with cake-crushing machinery bought from a derelict mill near Doncaster. He and Tadman were, they said, “experimenting,” and the council would have to compensate them handsomely, when they took over the old buildings.

Huggins shovelled shingle into the lorry with a blithe conscience. The wind tugged at his coat and blew sand in clouds racing along the shore to sting his face. It dragged back the spray from the tumbling waves, catching them by the hair as they reached their crest and crashing down into the shrieking shingle. The rhythm of his hard muscular labour filled him with contentment.

All that he had done, he had done honestly. Snaith had initiated him into the mysteries of Big Business. Snaith was a good man. God intended His stewards to use their wits to increase their power, so that they could build schools and suburbs, endow lectureships and fight the devil. The war planes, playing their lovely dangerous game in the fresh cold morning, had been sent up by money; money could fetch them down, could beat swords into ploughshares and make the desert blossom.

But the rates must go up. And that meant opposition. The real trouble would lie with men like Carne and Gryson. Specially Carne.

Huggins leant on his spade and paused, deep in thought.

There were, he considered, two ways of dealing with obstructionists; tie up their own interests with progress, or get them off the council. Both were possible.

He had been studying ordnance surveys with Tadman and Drew, and had realised that Carne held three small paddocks on the south of the Skerrow road, just opposite to the Wastes. He had bought them in the rich days after the war as a convenient half-way house for keeping cattle and sheep he intended to sell in Kingsport.

Huggins remembered a jest of Tadman’s at their last meeting. Carne wanted to sell the fields. He was hard up. True, they were not likely to become as valuable as the Waste itself, but they were something. If he held on to them, and if the scheme went through, he might reap a profit.

Ever since then, Huggins had been thinking. He was new to the game of high finance and his ideas came slowly. But once they came, their force was overwhelming, he could endure no delay; he must act at once.

He threw the last shovelful of stones into the lorry.

“That’ll do now.”

He began to peel off his overalls.

“You’ll drive back. I’ve got business in Maythorpe.”

“How’re you going? Up steps by Shacks?”

“No. I can get up here.”

Spurling looked at the broken slopes of clay.

“I wouldn’t. It’s crumbling all time. Not safe.”

“It’s all right,”

Huggins wanted to risk something. He wanted to prove his certainty. The good hand of his God was upon him, and he was unafraid.

The engine of the lorry was cold and would not start at first; the wheels churned helplessly in the sand; but Huggins put his great shoulder against the side, and it seemed to him as though in his new strength he had really lifted that weight and sent the vehicle bumping and rocking away across the sand.

He felt that he could do anything. When he turned to climb the cliff his body seemed blazing with power.

Yet the ascent was less easy than he had imagined. Footholds were treacherous. The lumps of clay broke off in his hands. To his left the rich brown earth of a landslide recalled Spurling’s reminder; cracks an inch wide opened in the peeling ledges; after the next rainstorm the water would wash away those thick slices of mud.

He had to go cautiously, resting on his great stomach lest the turf-covered ledges should give way beneath him. He was a big fat man, but he was no coward, and his muscular strength was tremendous. He was enjoying himself. He had not played a daft trick like this for years, and to climb Maythorpe Cliff, even for a boy, was no small effort.

The surface of the clay had been dried by wind, but beneath, it was moist and slippery. Twice he slid downwards, tobogganing on his belly, bumping and swearing; but at last his eyes came on to the level of the edge, and he could peer over, into the blue-brown plough land.

Very odd it looked; the furrows towering like bulwarks, fringed with bristling stubble, formidable as a forest. Grunting and cursing, he got one knee over the ledge, and hauled his bulk over, blown but happy.

Well, that had been a pull, and risky too. At any moment, tons of earth were ready to fall. If he wanted a sign from God, he might consider that he had been vouchsafed one. He could go upon his mission with confidence, assured that if the Lord had not intended him to go, He could have stopped him.

He pulled handfuls of dry wicks and couch grass from a hedge bottom, and brushed himself down as well as he could, before he set off across the fields to Maythorpe, picking his teeth with a hawthorn twig and grinning, because Nellie would never believe that he had climbed Maythorpe Cliff.

The drive to the hall had not been raked for weeks; deep ruts cut into its weed-locked gravel; the gate hung loose from one hinge; a broken chimney-pot lay on the bird-flecked terrace. Huggins had thought once that the poor were blessed; he knew now that prosperity is God’s reward for virtue.

He rang twice before Elsie answered. A great raw-boned woman, thought Huggins critically. Well, whoever gives Carne his bit of comfort, I doubt if it’s his housekeeper.

She told him that her master was up the fields. Huggins did not mind.

“It’s a grand day for walking. I climbed the cliff to get here.”

Elsie was not interested. She thought that men like Huggins should come to the back door.

“If I should miss him, tell your master that Huggins called. Councillor Huggins—about a county council matter.”

He trudged on. It was, as he had said, a grand day for walking. The stack-yards and stables were oddly quiet. The low ivy-covered rows of loose-boxes were empty; the chalk road to the fields scarred with ruts half a foot deep. On both sides the bare winter fields stretched to the horizon.

Huggins whistled as he strode, but even so, he heard the sound of slashing and rootling in the fence before he saw anything. Peering over, he found Carne, in shirt sleeves and waistcoat, instructing a lad in the difficult craft of hedging.

For a minute or two, Huggins stood watching his fellow councillor. A strong man himself, he was a judge of physical agility. Those deft rhythmical strokes with the slasher, that sure movement of hand and knife impressed him.

“Now you have a go,” said Carne, and stook back, handing his instrument to the boy, who tried to imitate him with quick nervous prods.

“No. This way. Stand easier. Loosen yourself up a bit, and don’t be scared of it.”

Carne was patient. He knew his job and was a kindly teacher. There were few rural crafts which he could not perform better than his men. He could thatch a straw stack, load a wagon, open out a field before harvest with a scythe, lift an eighteen stone sack of wheat and swing it across his shoulder. He was about to lose Maythorpe, not because he could not farm it, but because he had lived for years beyond his income, drawing out of the farm more than it could stand.

His hedging and ditching became a finished art; but he was not, it appeared, as fit as the preacher who watched him, for, having demonstrated to the boy what ought to be done, he leant back against a post, looking grey and drawn.

“Good-morning, Mr. Carne.”

Huggins peered over the hedge and Carne started. There was neither welcome nor reproof in his voice as he replied, “Good-morning.”

“Can I have a word with you?”

“Yes.”

Carne gave a few further instructions to the boy, caught up his coat from the bough where it hung, then vaulted easily over the low slashed hedge. The two men fell into step, walking back to the farm. “Well?” Carne inquired.

Huggins cleared his throat. The Lord directed him.

“You’re taking the chair at this ‘Keep Down the Rates’ meeting in Yarrold?”

“Yes. Well?”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit of a waste of time?”

“Why?”

“They’re going up anyway. Eight and ten to twelve and six.”

“Well?”

“Look here, Mr. Carne. I’ll be straight with you. We’re not always on the same side of the fence, but I like you. You’re straight. I don’t want to see you out of the council.”

“Kind of you.”

“Don’t you think that if you always run against the tide you may be out next March?”

“That’s my business.”

“Maybe you don’t mind? Maybe it’s true that you’re selling up and clearing out anyway?”

“Who told you that?”

“It’s all over the Riding. Public Health Committee’s after your place, isn’t it?”

“Look here, Huggins. I’m a busy man, if you’re not. If you’ve got anything to say, will you say it? I’m listening.”

“Good. I’m talking then. Would you like to make a little easy money?”

“Are you a fool, or do you think I’m one?”

“Come, come. This isn’t a confidence trick, you know.” Huggins laughed rather nervously, but his spirit was still secure. “You’ve been opposing the new garden-village building scheme with Kingsport.”

“I have.”

“You think it’ll send the rates up.”

“It will.”

“You can’t afford higher rates.”

“No one can.”

“Quite so. But that’s not the only reason, is it? You’re not doing this just for your own sake, are you? If you could see your way round it, you would, wouldn’t you? If you could use this building scheme as a way of saving Maythorpe, you wouldn’t chuck it all up, would you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“All right. All right. You will in a minute.” Huggins’ deep belly chuckle reverberated in the bright morning. He was looking down at the dark domain of Maythorpe, shrouded with trees, flanked by its colonies of buildings; no one would want to lose that noble property.

“You’ve got three paddocks up by the Skerrow road.”

“I have.”

“About fifty acres.”

“Seventy-three.”

“As much as that? All the better. You’ve been trying to sell them.”

“Oh. D’you want ’em?”

“I wouldn’t mind ’em, if I had the cash. But I’m a poor man. I’ve only got a tip for you—stick to them.”

“Indeed? Why?”

“Stick to ’em, man, and pray God that Leame Ferry Waste’s bought by the council. Don’t you realise what’ll happen to all that property?”