All Things Bright and Beautiful Read online

  The dwelling house was renovated almost out of recognition and I drank coffee instead of tea in the living room which had become a place of grace and charm with an antique table, chintzy furniture and pictures on the walls. The old outbuildings were converted into loose boxes with shining, freshly painted doors.

  The only thing which got no attention was Frank’s little new byre; it was used as a storage place for corn and bedding for the horses.

  I always felt a tug at my heart when I looked in there at the thick dust on the floor, the windows almost opaque with dirt, the cobwebs everywhere, the rusting water bowls, the litter of straw bales, peat moss and sacks of oats where once Frank’s cows had stood so proudly.

  It was all that was left of a man’s dream.

  39

  I HAD NEVER BEEN married before so there was nothing in my past experience to go by but it was beginning to dawn on me that I was very nicely fixed.

  I am talking, of course, of material things. It would have been enough for me or anybody else to be paired with a beautiful girl whom I loved and who loved me. I hadn’t reckoned on the other aspects.

  This business of studying my comfort, for instance. I thought such things had gone out of fashion, but not so with Helen. It was brought home to me again as I walked in to breakfast this morning. We had at last acquired a table—I had bought it at a farm sale and brought it home in triumph tied to the roof of my car—and now Helen had vacated the chair on which she used to sit at the bench and had taken over the high stool. She was perched away up there now, transporting her food from far below, while I was expected to sit comfortably in the chair. I don’t think I am a selfish swine by nature but there was nothing I could do about it.

  And there were other little things. The neat pile of clothing laid out for me each morning; the clean, folded shirt and handkerchief and socks so different from the jumble of my bachelor days. And when I was late for meals, which was often, she served me with my food but instead of going off and doing something else she would down tools and sit watching me while I ate. It made me feel like a sultan.

  It was this last trait which gave me a clue to her behaviour. I suddenly remembered that I had seen her sitting by Mr. Alderson while he had a late meal; sitting in the same pose, one arm on the table, quietly watching him. And I realised I was reaping the benefit of her lifetime attitude to her father. Mild little man though he was she had catered gladly to his every wish in the happy acceptance that the man of the house was number one; and the whole pattern was rubbing off on me now.

  In fact it set me thinking about the big question of how girls might be expected to behave after marriage. One old farmer giving me advice about choosing a wife once said: “Have a bloody good look at the mother first, lad,” and I am sure he had a point. But if I may throw in my own little word of counsel it would be to have a passing glance at how she acts towards her father.

  Watching her now as she got down and started to serve my breakfast the warm knowledge flowed through me as it did so often that my wife was the sort who just liked looking after a man and that I was so very lucky.

  And I was certainly blooming under the treatment. A bit too much, in fact, and I was aware I shouldn’t be attacking this plateful of porridge and cream; especially with all that material sizzling in the frying pan. Helen had brought with her to Skeldale House a delicious dowry in the shape of half a pig and there hung from the beams of the topmost attic a side of bacon and a majestic ham; a constant temptation. Some samples were in the pan now and though I had never been one for large breakfasts I did not demur when she threw in a couple of big brown eggs to keep them company. And I put up only feeble resistance when she added some particularly tasty smoked sausage which she used to buy in a shop in the market place.

  When I had got through it all I rose rather deliberately from the table and as I put on my coat I noticed it wasn’t so easy to button as it used to be.

  “Here are your sandwiches, Jim,” Helen said, putting a parcel in my hand. I was spending a day in the Scarburn district, tuberculin testing for Ewan Ross, and my wife was always concerned lest I grow faint from lack of nourishment on the long journey.

  I kissed her, made a somewhat ponderous descent of the long flights of stairs and went out the side door. Half way up the garden I stopped as always and looked up at the window under the tiles. An arm appeared and brandished a dishcloth vigorously. I waved back and continued my walk to the yard. I found I was puffing a little as I got the car out and I laid my parcel almost guiltily on the back seat. I knew what it would contain; not just sandwiches but meat and onion pie, buttered scones, ginger cake to lead me into further indiscretions.

  There is no doubt that in those early days I would have grown exceedingly gross under Helen’s treatment. But my job saved me; the endless walking between the stone barns scattered along the hillsides, the climbing in and out of calf pens, pushing cows around, and regular outbursts of hard physical effort in calving and foaling. So I escaped with only a slight tightening of my collar and the occasional farmer’s remark, “By gaw, you’ve been on a good pasture, young man!”

  Driving away, I marvelled at the way she indulged my little whims, too. I have always had a pathological loathing of fat, so Helen carefully trimmed every morsel from my meat. This feeling about fat, which almost amounted to terror, had been intensified since coming to Yorkshire, because back in the thirties the farmers seemed to live on the stuff. One old man, noticing my pop-eyed expression as I viewed him relishing his lunch of roast tat bacon, told me he had never touched lean meat in his life.

  “Ah like to feel t’grease runnin’ down ma chin!” he chuckled. He pronounced it “grayus” which made it sound even worse. But he was a ruddy faced octogenarian, so it hadn’t done him any harm; and this held good for hundreds of others just like him. I used to think that the day in day out and hard labour of farming burned it up in their systems but if I had to eat the stuff it would kill me very rapidly.

  The latter was, of course, a fanciful notion as was proved to me one day.

  It was when I was torn from my bed one morning at 6 a.m. to attend a calving heifer at old Mr. Horner’s small farm and when I got there I found there was no malpresentation of the calf but that it was simply too big. I don’t like a lot of pulling but the heifer, lying on her bed of straw, was obviously in need of assistance. Every few seconds she strained to the utmost and a pair of feet came into view momentarily then disappeared as she relaxed.

  “Is she getting those feet out any further?” I asked.

  “Nay, there’s been no change for over an hour,” the old man replied.

  “And when did the water bag burst?”

  “Two hours since.”

  There was no doubt the calf was well and truly stuck and getting drier all the time, and if the labouring mother had been able to speak I think she would have said: “For Pete’s sake get this thing away from me!”

  I could have done with a big strong man to help me but Mr. Horner, apart from his advanced age, was a rather shaky lightweight And since the farm was perched on a lonely eminence miles from the nearest village there was no chance of calling in a neighbour. I would have to do the job myself.

  It took me nearly an hour. With a thin rope behind the calf’s ears and through his mouth to stop the neck from telescoping I eased the little creature inch by inch into the world. Not so much pulling but rather leaning back and helping the heifer as she strained. She was a rather undersized little animal and she lay patiently on her side, accepting the situation with the resignation of her kind. She could never have calved without help and all the time I had the warm conviction that I was doing what she wanted and needed. I felt I should be as patient as she was so I didn’t hurry but let things come in their normal sequence; the little nose with the nostrils twitching reassuringly, then the eyes wearing a preoccupied light during the tight squeeze, then the ears and with a final rush the rest or the calf.

  The young mother was obviously none