Lanky Jones Read online

  ‘They’re used to being herded together.’

  ‘And pushed around like they were and prodded with sticks?’

  ‘The prodding they get would be the equivalent to a tap with a finger to you. And anyway there are RSPCA men on the watch all the time for cruelty. There was no cruelty there.’

  ‘Do you think they knew they were going to die?’

  ‘What!’ The Rover swerved slightly and Michael gave a short laugh as he said, ‘Most of those you saw today were going back into the fields to breed next year’s calves.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. As for those that go to the abattoir…you like lamb, don’t you?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Oh, you did. Well, the next time a slice of roast lamb is put down in front of you, stick to your principles, don’t eat it, nobody’s forcing you. Anyway, what are you yarping on about? There’s more care and attention given to animals today than to humans in many places, and if you want to feel sorry for animals, really sorry for animals, go abroad. If you were sorry for what you saw today, you’ll spend the rest of your life howling your eyes out.’

  ‘You seen animals abroad?’

  ‘Aye, I have, first when I went with the school tour years ago and then eighteen months ago I went to North Africa for a month.’

  They drove in silence for some time until Michael spoke again. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you’ll take to country life, farm life, and as I seem to view things, that’s going to be awkward at least for you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Again it was some seconds before Michael replied. He had swung the Land Rover from the main road onto the side road that led to the farm before he said, ‘Well, if you don’t know what I’m getting at, I’m not going to enlighten you. Time’ll tell, that’s all. But what I think is, instead of being concerned about animals you want to turn your attention to humans and try to fathom their behaviour and short memories. Or—’ he now sighed as he ended, ‘perhaps it’s their needs that I know nothing about as yet.’

  Daniel looked at his companion in silence. He was driving the Land Rover at a breakneck speed now over the rough road. He certainly was a funny fellow, odd. He couldn’t fathom him, let alone any other humans. But there must be something behind his cryptic remark …

  At the farm he found a letter awaiting him from his mother. He read it standing in the kitchen and Mrs Everton, entering the room with Sally, both carrying bowls of strawberries, stopped and asked quietly, ‘Bad news, Daniel?’

  He looked up from the letter saying, ‘It’s how you look at it, Mrs Everton. Me mam says she’s coming on Saturday…here. She’s determined I’m to go back with her.’

  Mrs Everton put the bowl of strawberries down on the table before turning to Michael and saying, ‘Well, if she wants you to go and stay with her then you must.’

  ‘No must about it, Mrs Everton. I’m not going.’

  Mrs Everton now motioned to Sally to bring her a fancy dish from the delph rack and as she began sorting out the strawberries into it she said, ‘I understand she has some legal claim over you until you are sixteen. When will that be?’

  ‘October.’

  ‘Well, that isn’t so far away; surely you could comply with her wishes until then. It’s understandable that she wants to see you.’

  ‘If she wanted to see me so badly she shouldn’t have left me, or Dad.’

  ‘Oh, people’s reactions can’t be explained away as simply as that, Daniel. In many cases you never value anything till you have lost it, and perhaps that’s what’s happening to your mother now.’

  ‘She’s got another husband; that should satisfy her.’

  ‘Yes, you would think it would, but it doesn’t always work out that way.’

  ‘She wanted a better house and a big car and things like that, and now she’s got them why can’t she be satisfied? She’s got the best end of the stick, because she left Dad in a hole.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say she’s got the best end of the stick. Big houses and cars are not enough to fill some wants in people’s lives, and I don’t really think you’ll understand that, Daniel, until you’re much older.’

  ‘I’m not a kid.’ For a moment he forgot to whom he was talking and when Mrs Everton turned round, and smiled at him gently he bowed his head and said, ‘I’m…I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry for, Daniel. And I know you’re not a kid; you look much older than your years and your height adds to this. But there are some things that one can’t experience, especially in the teenage years; in fact no-one would wish them to have such experiences. These years in youth are for learning how to live, they are not easy years. You’ll likely look back later and find them the hardest in your life. I myself wouldn’t want to live through my teens again because I see now I had so many false values. I felt I was right in most things I said, and believe it or not’—she smiled widely at him now—‘although I might appear to you as a quiet sort of woman, in my teens I was a bit of a firebrand. I’ll tell you something.’ She now glanced at Sally as she said, ‘And you don’t know this, but my father locked me in my room for two days. He had forbidden me to see a certain boy and I was determined to see this young man. But I must admit he wasn’t all that young, being twelve years older than me. I was seventeen at the time, and if I could have got out I would have run off with him. And I know now my life would have been ruined, because, wait for it—’ she divided her glance between Daniel and her daughter now as she said, ‘he had been twice married and his second wife to whom he was still married lived in Bolton. My father, when he pushed me into the bedroom, had slapped my ears for me and I thought I’d never forgive him. A week later I laid my head on his chest and cried my eyes out…Here, put some cream on these strawberries,’ she said, pushing a bowl of the fruit along the table towards Daniel, and slowly now he folded up the letter and put it in his pocket as he thought he’d have to phone his father and tell him not to come on Saturday ’cos he wouldn’t want to meet her…and him.

  While eating the strawberries he looked at Mrs Everton busying herself around the kitchen and he knew that when they met she wouldn’t like his mother, and his mother would certainly dislike her, more than dislike her, hate her in fact, especially when she knew that his dad was a regular visitor here too. It was odd, he thought, that one could stop loving a person, as his mother had done his father, and go off and do her own thing, yet at the same time she didn’t want his dad to be happy in any way. People were funny. Grown-up people were very funny, odd. There was no understanding them; or anything they did.

  Chapter Seven

  Saturday morning started dull, it was raining somewhere over the hills. Sally had pointed that out to him. He had thought it was just a dark cloud but she said, ‘No, it’s likely pouring in Hexham, and it’ll soon be doing so right down the valley to Newcastle. The clouds are going that way.’

  He was getting to like Sally. And yet at times he was a bit puzzled when something he would say, which to him might be just a straightforward question, seemed to upset her, and her replies would become drawn out, spasmodic like, as they were the first day he had met her. He couldn’t exactly tell why he felt sorry for her but he did. Perhaps it was because Michael always seemed to be going for her. For instance, this morning he heard him say, ‘Stop following Daniel around, and get on with your chores.’

  He had wanted to say, ‘I don’t mind,’ but he couldn’t, could he?

  He had finished sweeping up the storeroom and had gone to the harness room, thinking Michael was there, to ask him if there was anything else he could do before he changed his clothes in preparation for his mother’s visit. There was no-one in the harness room but there was a door leading out from the end of it into the stable which was now used as a garage, and when he heard Michael’s voice coming from there he moved down the room, only to stop at the door as he realised there was a sort of private conversation going on between Michael and his mother, for Michael was saying, ‘Don’t worry any more, I’m…I’m getting over it. Only one thing I’ll ask you and then we’ll forget about it. Do…do you think I’ve any relatives at all, alive I mean?’

  ‘Not that I know of, Michael. Your great-grandmother had only one daughter, then she again had only one daughter who was your mother.’

  ‘And…and my father?’

  ‘Nothing was known of him except that he had been killed a fortnight before your mother returned home, that was just before you were born. But Michael, as I’ve said before, from the moment you were born you were mine. I shouldn’t say this but I shall, I feel that you are more my son than Sally is my daughter. And what is more, your dad loved you; he used to talk about you with such pride.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  Daniel went to turn away, but then he heard his own name mentioned.

  ‘Daniel said that compared to him I should consider myself lucky, and I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot and I’d like you to know now that I do.’

  ‘Oh, Michael.’

  He couldn’t see them but it was with a pang of envy that he felt Michael was within his mother’s embrace.

  He was actually turning stealthily away when Mrs Everton’s voice came to him, saying, ‘I’m looking forward to seeing this woman, but even before we meet what I’ve heard about her doesn’t make me think we’re going to be bosom friends. How she could walk out on a son like Daniel and, then again, on a husband like Peter I just don’t know.’

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’

  ‘Who? Daniel?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean Daniel. You know who I mean, his father. Don’t worry, I…I wouldn’t be mad or anything; life must go on.’

  ‘Oh Michael, don’t, don’t. I loved your father and it’s too soon to think along those lines.’

  ‘But the lines are there, aren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s ridiculous. It’s likely never entered the man’s head.’

  ‘What I’ve seen of him I wouldn’t consider him a fool, so it has entered his head. And there’s one thing if nothing else in his favour, and in Daniel’s an’ all: they must know something about the upstairs business but they’ve never let it make any difference. I really think you should tell them.’

  ‘No! No! I promised and you promised. Let it stay like that.’

  ‘Well, this won’t get the work done. Come on.’

  Daniel could almost see Michael holding out his hand to his mother, and so, on tiptoe, he swiftly made for the door, and then as swiftly crossed the yard to the house.

  There was something to hide upstairs after all then. However, what was concerning him more than that was the business about his dad and Mrs Everton. That would drive his mother mad. Yet why should it? She had her new husband. Still he knew that if she guessed his dad had taken a fancy to Mrs Everton she would play up, and then in a way he himself would become more than ever like a shuttlecock between them.

  The car was the latest in Rovers. His mother stepped out of it and onto the narrow wet slimy stones of the farmyard and looked about her.

  Mrs Everton had opened the front door and she was standing just within it as she pushed Daniel forward, saying under her breath, ‘Go on, boy, meet your mother.’

  Daniel went down the two steps and across the narrow strip of wet lawn onto the crazy-paving path, and there he stopped and looked at his mother coming towards him. She was dressed as he had never seen her before: she looked almost like a fashion model except that she wasn’t tall enough to be a model. She was wearing a pale green suit trimmed with gold braid. The skirt had a slit up the side. The heels on her shoes were at least three inches high. Her hair, he noticed immediately, had been done in a different style: it was a mass of tiny corkscrew curls like the way Petula Clark wore hers. As he neared her and she put out her hand towards him he noticed that every finger had a ring on it. When she reached up to kiss him he had the desire to push her away. The kissing business had started only after she had remarried.

  ‘My, my! I swear you’ve put on another six inches. When are you going to stop, boy?’ was her greeting.

  ‘Hello there, Danny boy. Or should I say, farmer’s boy?’ said the man.

  ‘You should say neither.’

  ‘Now, now, Daniel. We’ll have none of that tone…Where’s the woman?’

  ‘Woman?’

  ‘The farmer’s wife.’

  ‘Mrs Everton is waiting for you in the hall.’ He turned abruptly about and led the way towards the front door, and he heard his mother exclaim as her high heels sank into the wet lawn, ‘Oh, my goodness, my shoes!’ And the man exclaim, ‘Well, I told you we were coming to a farm. You would put them on.’

  ‘How do you do? I’m Mrs Everton, and this is my son Michael…and my daughter Sally.’

  The two women looked at each other and what Mrs Everton saw was a very smartly dressed woman with a good figure and a pretty face marred by a mouth that drooped at the corners. Her verdict was: a petulant madam.

  Daniel’s mother looked at the woman before her and saw someone about her own age, perhaps a little older, dressed in a cotton dress which was cheap but which did not mar her well proportioned figure. This she dubbed to herself as plump. As to the farmer’s wife’s face, she classed this as ordinary, ignoring the large brown eyes with the natural thick lashes and the creamy skin that required and received no make-up.

  ‘Will you come into the sitting room? Perhaps you would like a cup of tea while you’re waiting.’

  ‘No, thank you; we must be off soon. George and I have to get back; we are to attend a dinner this evening.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be nice.’ Mrs Everton smiled from the man to the woman. Then looking at Daniel, she said, ‘That’ll be a change for you from roughing it among the cattle.’

  ‘Oh, this is a business dinner, the boy isn’t ready for that kind of thing yet.’ The man’s lips were pursed while he nodded at Daniel. ‘Plenty of time for that. Anyway the kids of today, what do they want? Television, pop records, discos. Nothing like that in my young days. Work, that’s what we had to do, and that’s where it’s got me today, work.’ He nodded from one to the other and was about to continue when his wife said to Daniel, ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘No, I’m not ready, Mam.’

  ‘What?’

  Then all the eyes in the room were on him as he repeated, ‘I’m not ready, ’cos I’m not coming with you.’

  ‘Now, look here, my boy,’ the man started to say.

  ‘Don’t you “boy” me. And I’m not your boy and never shall be.’

  ‘You are coming with us, Daniel, and we’ll have no more showing off. You know the situation as well as I do: I have the authority that you shall spend a certain time with me. Now I’ve let you off for weeks but my patience is at an end. Your father put you up to this, didn’t he?’

  ‘He did not. He told me to go with you. But I’m not going back with you, now or ever. I’ll soon be sixteen and then you won’t be able to do anything about it.’

  ‘But until you are sixteen I can do and will do a lot about it.’ She turned now and looked at Mrs Everton, saying, ‘You can help by telling him he must go, that you won’t have him here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that. Peter left him in my care.’

  ‘Oh! Oh! It’s Peter, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mrs Everton now drew herself up to her full height and her voice held a quiet dignity as she said, ‘And my name is Mary; and my daughter’s is Sally and my son’s is Michael. You don’t stand on ceremony on a farm.’

  ‘Look’—the man’s voice was quiet now as he appealed to Daniel—‘don’t cause any more upset, laddie. All right, you’ll have it your way in a few months’ time but for the present do as your mother tells you and come along. You won’t lose by it. I’ll promise you…you won’t lose by it. I was thinking about getting you a motorbike, that is later on if you behave yourself. You’ll find me very amenable if you behave…’

  ‘Shut up! And you can keep your motorbikes. I want nothing from you. As for you, Mam’—he was now looking into his mother’s face which was as tight with anger as when she failed to get her own way with his father—‘as for you,’ he went on, ‘all this “You are my son” business is put on in order to get at me dad, to show him you still have some authority.’

  ‘Daniel’—it was Michael’s voice speaking now—‘go on, get your things and go with your mother. It won’t be for long, just a weekend…’

  ‘It won’t be just for the weekend,’ Daniel’s mother cried, rounding on Michael; ‘it’ll be for a week or more. He’s going to make up for the time he’s missed coming. And—’ She was now confronting her son again as she cried at him, ‘And don’t think you’ll get the better of me today. I’m going to sit here until you are ready to leave.’ And at this she sat down on a nearby chair.

  She now had the attention of everyone in the room, and there was a strange silence for some seconds before Daniel said, ‘All right, you sit there until I go with you and you’ll take root.’ He stared hard at his mother, then turned about and rushed from the room.

  It had been three o’clock when the Rover entered the farmyard; it was half past four when it left, and without Daniel. As Mrs Everton watched it tearing away down the narrow road she put her hand to her head and, looking at Sally, said, ‘I’ve never been so glad to see the back of anybody in my life as that woman. Poor Peter.’

  ‘I’d say poor Daniel.’

  ‘Yes’—her mother smiled at her now—‘and poor Daniel. As he said, he’s been used as a shuttlecock between them for years. Now I wonder where he ran off to?’

  ‘The bottom fields likely.’

  ‘Well, go and see if you can find him.’

  It was a half-hour later when Sally returned. ‘I can’t see him anywhere, Mam,’ she said. ‘I went up on the knoll and looked about and I shouted. I went into the copse and through the little wood.’