Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [593]
“That’s one thing, Miss Shockley, you will never know.”
They had their quarrel in July. It was soon after the big sheep fair where they had had their first modest success. Looking over the accounts she had concluded that they should be in a healthy position by next March, when Jethro’s lease came up for renewal; but she had to admit to herself: “With only fifty acres, no matter what money we spend, we can never be more than marginally profitable. We need more land.” She said nothing to Jethro, but some careful enquiries with land agents soon told her what she wanted, and one day as they stood beside the chalk wall she said:
“There’s another fifty acres coming up for lease next spring. It’s only half a mile off. I think we should take it on. That would give us a hundred acres and increase the profits.”
She had expected him to be pleased. He was not.
“Too much.”
“But it would be more economical.”
“I like what I have.”
“But think of the extra space.”
“Space!” He looked at her with contempt he did not try to hide. “Space, you call it.” He gestured to the hamlet behind them and the slowly opening valley beyond; then he pointed up to the high ground and its endless ridges. “I have space enough here.”
She knew what he meant; she respected it, yet intellectually she was impatient.
“If you just look at the accounts . . .” she began.
“Accounts,” he spat the word out. “I know them.” Indeed, she knew that he understood the figures very well indeed. “Accounts, woman.” The expression conveyed a universe of contempt, not for her, but for the very underpinnings of her life, that she had never thought of before. “I live,” he said savagely, and turned on his heel and walked away.
She rode home very thoughtfully that day.
She saw him a week later in Salisbury. It was evening and he was drunk: not badly so, but enough. She came up with him just as the light was fading and he was climbing slowly into his cart. He saw her but took no notice.
“How uncommonly rude the ordinary people are,” she thought furiously, as she stood in her crinoline and cloak and stared at him. “Why does one waste one’s time on them?”
She saw him flick his whip and, as the little pony slowly started up, he took his old, broad-brimmed hat and crammed it on his head.
“I see you are drunk.” She did not shout the words, but spoke them loud enough for him to hear. Two or three passers-by turned to stare.
It was just before he reached the corner that he turned. Very slowly, just as he had the first time they met, he raised his hat in a salute, his ironic eyes gazing straight into hers as he rolled away.
She waited two weeks before she went to the farm again. She was no longer angry: indeed, she could see his point of view. He had his own life – primitive no doubt, but one that gave him his own, strange freedom. It was foolish of her to try and tie him down, turn him into something he was not.
“He’s just a wild animal,” she thought, as she rode across the open. And yet, she admitted to herself, there was a challenge, even an excitement in trying to reform and tame a wild animal. Perhaps one day she might even persuade him to add another fifty acres.
Neither of them mentioned the other farm, or the incident in the town. They spoke quietly, almost distantly, as they always had before. But as she stood with him on top of the ridge that day, looking back at the little farm with its chalk wall and mulberry tree, she suddenly glanced into his eyes and it was as though, for an instant, there was a complicity between them: this was their farm, their wilderness, a place apart, whose ancient ways would never change.
“Perhaps,” she suggested playfully as she mounted her horse to leave, “you’ll allow me to make some improvements to the house.”
He came briefly to