Laughing House by Warwick Deeping (grave mercy .txt) 📕

but it was saved by its height and its steep and boggy trackway. The gradients were too stiff, and I thanked God for it.

Another savage winter lay before us, but Rose Cottage proved a cosy little place. We were well off for fuel, as I had moved several tons of coal, coke and anthracite from the House, and it was dumped in the cottage orchard under sheets of corrugated iron, and we had a supply of logs in one of the outhouses. Ellen, good soul, seemed happy and contented, and not tempted to rush off in search of pay-plunder, nor was she of a fit age. She could do her shopping at Framley Green, or I would drive her into Melford, and we managed to get an old woman to come in twice a week and help her to do chores. And Billy was with us, devoted to Ellen, and sleeping in his basket at the foot of her bed. I had found it impossible to take the Cairn anywhere near the house, for he could neither understand nor tolerate strangers there, and utterly refused to make friends with anything in khaki. On one occasion when we were passing the service gate, Billy tres passed before I missed him. I always went by the house without looking at it and ignoring the men. I heard sudden growls, and bad language, and Billy came out into the road with half a brick bouncing after him. After that incident I never took the Cairn with me when I had to pass the house. He was a one-man dog, and the most ferocious of individualists.

Having written to our Agricultural Committee I had a visit from a representative. It was a bitter day, and the official he was a youngster seemed to be feeling the cold. My farmer friend had put his tractor to work and ploughed both South Mead and Upper Mead, some eight acres in all. I had done this without orders, and felt rather pleased with myself.

My young friend appeared to be in a congealed mood. I told him that I proposed to grow oafs, maize, and perhaps buckwheat, sunflowers and some fancy crops, partly to feed the poultry I intended to keep in Valley Mead. I had plenty of wire and we had been putting up runs. He looked, he listened, and said nonchalantly: “I’ll schedule you for potatoes.”

I suspected that the verdict did not rest with him, but that he was feeling full of authority.

I said: “Why potatoes?”

“Easy,” said he, “and safe.”

“You mean, my experience does not justify—?”

He lit a cigarette and took his time about it. Was I always to be so superfluous to the young?

“Not worth while putting little patches like this down to wheat.”

I tried mild sarcasm,

“But don’t you appreciate the fact that if I am to keep a couple of hundred laying hens, and feed should be short, there is some sense in my growing some cereals?”

He had his answer pat.

“We regard the hen as an inefficient food-machine. Do you know how much she eats in a year?”

“As a matter of fact I do.”

“Our opinion is that the eggs she produces do not justify in food value her consumption of grain and meal.”

He was a very formal and opinionated young man, and aloof and cold as the weather.

I put another point to him.

“I have two old men and myself. Have you ever lifted an acre of potatoes, much less eight?”

He was quite unmoved.

“We could send a “Digger” in, and you could get school children to help with the picking up. You would have to clamp. Your men capable of doing that?”

“I dare say we are.”

“And you could feed the chats to your chickens.”

He left me, driving off in a neat and clean little car, and I had noticed that his hands were soft and white and showed no sign of wear and tear. Not a bad job for a youngster, hectoring other folk into doing the hard work. I wrote again to the committee, and received another visit, this time from a working farmer and a brother landowner. They were much more courteous and sympathetic. After all I was a kind of volunteer. The ultimate verdict was that I should grow three acres of potatoes, two acres of greens, and that the rest of the land should be cropped as I pleased.

I thanked them.

We had got our huts up at the bottom of Valley Mead, and I had managed to buy a number of secondhand chicken-houses from a poultry farmer who was going out of business. We had to wire the runs against foxes, and Potter put another point to me.

“What about them young thieves over yonder?”

I saw his point. We had several hundred weights of barbed wire in hand, and we cut chestnut posts and strung barbed wire all along our side of the road where the Pool did not defend it. I knew that a man with wire-cutters could get through the fence with ease, but such marauding might be too obviously planned and blatant. Our netted runs would be an additional protection. A couple of R.A.S.C. privates strolled across while we were at work, Potter, straining the wire and I stapling it. They were facetious.

“Expectin’ Jerry, what?”

Potter replied to them.

“No, them there fruit thieves. Can’t be too careful these days.”

“Sez you!”

They looked sulky, and mooched off.

My friend the Major happened to pass by a little later, and he stopped and was floridly saucy.

“Who are you fencing against, if I may ask?”

I was curt with him.

“The defenders of England.”

We got our runs and houses up, and I had bought in a hundred Rhode Island pullets from the same poultry farmer who had been feeling the draught. They were four-month birds and expected to lay early in Novem ber. Feeding them was going to be a problem, though we had salved part of the potato crop, and in earlier days I had laid in half a ton of oats and half a ton of maize. We had a small hand-mill for grinding meal. When I made application a mild quantity of feeding stuff was allocated to me. I knew that I should have to market all the eggs, but I had installed a dozen hens at Rose Cottage. Later, we managed to buy and collect other people’s scraps from Framley, and I was moved to wonder at all the pre-war fuss about poultry. The birds did well on their war rations, and I had very few deaths. So much for the poultry pundits who stuffed text-books full of elaborate nonsensfe!

The House began to look very forlorn that winter. Its white face was feeling neglect and the weather, and I could picture her poor dear peering in her mirror and feeling sad. No powder puff, no make-up, and incipient wrinkles. Sometimes I turned my glasses on her, and saw the peeling walls, and the woodwork of the windows showing through the perished paint. I noticed a greenish-black streak down one wall where a gutter had been stopped with leaves and the rainwater was spilling over. Many windows were broken and plugged up with black-out material, though why the asses who had to live in a cold house must break windows was beyond me. Also, some slates had come loose and slid down over the gutters, but nothing was done about it. So much for private property! The State might requisition it, but it took no trouble to keep it in repair. There were dozens of men loafing about the place who could have put those trifles right.

As for the poor garden, it had become almost unrecognizable, dirty and shaggy and trampled. The glass houses might have had a bomb near them, and the peaches and nectarines might be dead or growing rampantly through the glass. I saw that some ten yards of the fruit-wall had toppled over, and since it had been in fair condition I concluded that it had been pushed over. The sheer, wanton mischief of adult urchins! Two more huts had been erected on the ground above the stables, and the House now looked like an iceberg surrounded by brown rocks. The paths and drive were a mass of weeds, and more trees broken.

About that time, too, came the shout for old iron. A lorry arrived one day with a gang of men and they proceeded to smash down the old blue railings and to remove the gates. I had received no warning, and when I protested I was given to understand that the place was Government property, and that I had no say in the matter.

V

JUST when we had thought our defences secure a hard spell set in; the pool froze, and our friends across the road took to , sliding on the ice. Our only protection here was a mass of rhododendron, and any thing that could be hacked down was no barrier against the lads in brown, so we had to rake up some old iron posts and drive them into the frozen ground, and sling barbed wire along to link up with our other fences. Potter or I went round the houses at night; we kept them padlocked, and inspected the lock by the light of a torch. The black-out was a confounded nuisance, and so was the weather. The drinking fountains froze, and had to be thawed out over an oil stove in one of the sheds, and water was a problem. We tried running a length of hose to the pool and fitting a semi-rotary pump, but the hose was cut twice. After that I carried water up by car in a budge, having removed one of the front seats. I fitted Potter out with an old leather golf jerkin, some riding breeches and leggings, and a heavy overcoat. He was a dogged old man, and he was as hard set as I was to keep the barbarians at bay. Incidentally, the frozen pool became decorated with old tins and bottles and what not which the Army cast upon it, I suppose, as an adventure in malicious humour. Or it may have been just oafishness.

But I will admit that I was rather enjoying myself. I was much fitter for the hard work, and happy in the idea of being somewhat useful. Our pullets had come into lay, and the egg production was good, in spite of the hard weather. Life was austere, especially at the table, and I was becoming almost a vegetarian. Potter got his cheese, but our rations were meagre compared to the food issued to the lads across the way. My farmer friend was collecting the army’s leavings for his pigs, and he told me that the wastefulness of this particular unit was scandalous.

Well, they were badly officered, especially in the matter of their C.O. and such cynicism spreads down wards and can debauch a whole unit. I was to discover later how immense the difference could be when those in control were of a far higher quality.

A word as to old Potter and Tom, our help. Both these veterans were to prove their wisdom and loyalty when the plunder-period arrived, and anything that called itself a gardener was demanding a pound a day. Most of them would have been dear at ten bob, when output was considered, and “Perks,” that wonderful word which justifies various forms of thieving. Neither Potter nor Tom proved greedy when I was hard put to it financially, and they did not suffer in the long run.

I told them that they would not be let down, and apparently the word of a gentleman was still good security.

How we welcomed that spring. The frost held till well into March, and work