Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [39]
“I don’t suppose you can, no.”
“No. But the problem facing me is this: you can’t apply modern methods to country like that.”
Gerard waved his cigarette at the wall of photographs.
“That was designed for horse-drawn plows. Harvesting with scythes. Potato-lifting by hand. A dozen sheep per field. It’s medieval, basically. So, if we’re going to modernize farming, George, we’ve got to modernize the landscape. Straighten it out. Rationalize it. Get it machine ready. Turn this part of Norfolk into clean prairie. That’s my vision.”
Mortimer tossed his cigarette end into the fireplace and sat back in his chair. He smiled.
“And you, Mr. Ackroyd, are wondering why the hell I’m telling you all this, seeing as how you’re not a farming man. Am I right?”
“Well, yes, to be honest.”
“Of course you are. So let’s get down to business. In various places up and down the country, there’s a lot of stuff that’s been lying idle since the end of the war. Ex-military stuff. Tracked bulldozers and so forth — things they used for building airfields and coastal defenses and whatnot. I’m buying up a lot of it. And I’m having some damn serious agricultural equipment shipped over from America. The locals will have their eyes on stalks when they see it, by God. But I’m going to need someone who knows big machinery. Someone who knows how to work it, maintain it. Someone who’s not scared of it. Someone like you, George.”
From somewhere deeper in the house came the faltering sound of a piano.
George hung his jacket carefully on the back of a kitchen chair. Ruth was in an ecstasy of curiosity, and he knew it.
“George?”
He loosened his tie and pulled it off over his head.
“George!”
He grinned, relenting. “He offered me a job.”
“What d’yer mean, a job? What sort of a job?”
“He’s buying in a whole ruddy fleet of machinery. Big stuff. And he wants me to look after it all. Full-time.”
“Oh, my God, George. Whatever did you say?”
“I told him I’d think about it. Then he offered to pay me double what Bill’s paying me. Plus a car. So I said yes.”
Ruth put both hands to her face, shocked. After a second or two, tears of delight rolled onto her cheeks from behind her spectacles.
It wasn’t a car, as it turned out. It was a smartened-up ex-army Land Rover. It was instantly the talk and envy of the neighborhood. And three weeks later, two men from the GPO turned up to install a telephone. Win refused, absolutely, ever, to have anything to do with it. If it rang when she was alone in the house, she’d cover her ears and shout, “He ent here!” at it. She went to her grave (actually, it was a plastic urn) without ever speaking to someone she couldn’t see. Other than God, of course.
BORSTEAD OFFERED LITTLE in the way of amusement, so Enoch Hoseason always attracted a small crowd on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.
At the western corner of the marketplace there stood a narrow archway leading into an irregular space called Angel Yard, named after a tavern long since demolished. For well over a century, Angel Yard had been occupied by little businesses and workshops specializing in agricultural services: harness makers, twine merchants, seedsmen, and the like. Hoseason’s great-grandfather had built a forge there and had prospered as a blacksmith. But by 1960 that business, like the others, was fast becoming obsolete. Horses — and their shoes — were on the way out. Enoch had turned his hand to sharpening lawn mowers, repairing garden tools, and, now and again, to hammering out wrought-iron gates and railings.
In social and religious terms, the Hoseason clan had always been awkward, harsh, thorny. They were Methodists for a while, but found Methodism a bit slack. They joined the Baptists, but found them a bit wet. Eventually they formed their own sect, calling themselves simply the Brethren. The men grew beards and tyrannized their women. Their instinctive response to more or less anything was to rail against it. The delights of the flesh, in particular, got their backs