He turned left into Berry Lane, so named because it was lined with bramble bushes on which blackberries grew in profusion. Despite the picking which had gone on lately there were multitudes left and the air was heavy with their warm black scent. Nobody was picking today, and that too was as it should be; blackberry-picking ended on the thirtieth of September. Sir Charles did not precisely believe, as many villagers did, that on that date the Devil flew over, claiming what berries were left as his own and cursing any who dared to take one, but he liked every traditional date to be recognised and honoured.
His mood darkened a little as he went along the lane. He would have liked to ride along, straight past Fuller’s and up to Flocky Hall, as he had been used to do in old Abram’s day. He had been very fond of Abram Clopton, a yeoman farmer of the real old breed whose family had been at Flocky Hall as long as Shelmadines had been at the Manor. Three tall Cloptons, bearing their bows, had gone with Shelmadine to Crecy—that was no legend but sober truth, for all four of them had died and had been brought home at Shelmadine expense and buried together in the church. Most of the dead brought back from that campaign had been buried at Dunwich and been taken out to sea again when half that town was washed away. From that time on, until fifteen years ago, when old
Abram died, the tie between the two families had been sound and close; but things were different now. Young Fred Clopton was progressive—a thing Sir Charles could in no way abide. He admitted—being nothing if not fair-minded —that Fred had a perfect right to do as he choose on his own land. Let him grow his turnips and his clover; let him marl his land and winter-feed his cattle and sell fresh beef all through the winter, and talk about the ‘Clopton Herd’ and market off his squealing little calves one by one at fabulous price as though they were some kind of jewel. All well and good. But to flaunt his success and his money, to buy his wife a pianoforte, to send his two red-faced little wenches to Baildon Female Academy and to go smashing off to market in a high gig with yellow wheels— that was a different thing altogether, because it made other men envious and discontented, made them mutter about enclosures. Flocky Hall was enclosed, three hundred and five acres, all fenced, but it had been like that ever since the monks at Baildon Abbey had started sheep farming, centuries ago; and it wasn’t being enclosed that made Fred Clopton successful, it was his luck, and his industry and the steady accumulation of wealth from centuries of thrifty, hard-working forebears. Damn it, Sir Charles could prove that that was true, for there were two other enclosed farms at Clevely: Bridge Farm, two hundred and ten acres, which had been part of the estate but which had been sold off in 1721, when things went wrong, and now belonged to a damned Dissenter named Shipton, who certainly wasn’t making a fortune; and Wood Farm, three hundred and twenty acres, still a Shelmadine property which Sir Charles had let, in a weak foolish moment, to a retired army officer named Rout who’d lost an arm at the battle of Bunker’s Hill and had a desire to live in the country and farm. He wasn’t making a fortune either; always behind with his rent. Discontented fellows who grumbled about the open fields and longed for enclosure never looked at Shipton, or Rout, they only saw Clopton. He had now arrived at Fuller’s farmhouse, a pretty, half-timbered building with a small orchard between it
and the lane and a small yard behind it. Fuller was, after Rout, the largest of his tenant farmers; he leased one hundred and ten acres—fifty-five in each of the great fields—and his tenancy gave him rights to the common pasture as well. He was a good farmer, hard working and punctual with his rent, but once or twice lately he had made a remark derogatory to the open-field system; and if he made one such today, Sir Charles had decided, he would give him notice, his lease being renewable next Lady Day.
As it happened there was no need for a remark; the first thing that met the Squire’s eye as he turned into the yard was a cart loaded with turnips, standing with upended shafts by the pigsty; and the second was the fantastic, crazy incomprehensible thing which Fuller had done to the kitchen. Sir Charles had always admired Mrs Fuller’s kitchen with its floor of buff and pink and primrose-coloured pamments, its wide hearth with the spits and the brick oven at the side, and the big black dresser set with bits of brass-ware and pewter plates and mugs. In earlier days, when he walked, or could dismount and mount again without a thought, he had often accepted Mrs Fuller’s invitation to step inside and drink a glass of her home-brewed ale, or cowslip wine, and eat a piece of her best plum cake; more recently she had brought these offerings to him on a tray and he had accepted them, graciously, out of custom.
Today he stared at a desecrated shrine. The kitchen had been stripped, its floor lay knee deep in straw; across the far end where the dresser had stood beside the door which led to the inner part of the house there was a brand-new manger, and the madman, Fuller, was standing in the manger, fixing over it a great wide slatted rack which jutted out and covered almost half the ceiling space. He .was hammering so vigorously he had not heard Sir Charles arrive and at the words, ‘What the devil are you about, Fuller?’ he gave a start and almost swallowed the nails that he was holding between his teeth. Then he spat them into his hand, jumped down from the
manger and came stumbling through the straw, a big-boned, gangling fellow, deceptively mild of eye and manner. He raised the hand which held the hammer to the lank, sweat-damp hair that lay in a bull-pow on his forehead.
‘Good day, sir. I’m sorry, didn’t hear you come.’
‘I asked what the devil you are about, Fuller?’ He knew that the answer would be displeasing, since it involved change, so the question might as well be brusque.
‘Well,’ Fuller said deliberately, ‘I’m fixing up a place for my beasts. This year I aim to coddle one or two of my best through the winter.’ He jiggled the nails in his left hand, but his light blue eyes, the colour of a speedwell, did not waver from their deliberate stare.
‘I had a good hay yield and Fred Clopton had more turnips than he wanted, so he sold me a load and I reckoned I’d try this here winter-feeding.’
‘And that demanded that you turn your kitchen into a byre?’
‘What else could I do? Pigs need the sty, horses need the stable; mustn’t build on my hired acres—you pointed that out yourself, sir, last time I mentioned the matter. Where else can I put my beasts?’
‘That,’ said Sir Charles, ‘is the question, Fuller. When every farmer gets these crazy notions and must keep his beasts through the winter, where will they all go? In a year or so the whole country’d be packed full of bullocks like Baildon market at Michaelmas. You never thought of that, did you? No! None of you fellows can ever see beyond your noses, and your noses are all snouting out quick profits and nothing else.’
Something sparked in Fuller’s pale eyes as he formed, in his mind, the answer to the accusation and the refusal of the argument; but he knew his landlord. Sir Charles could be impervious to reason, but open, occasionally, to appeal. So the farmer said mildly:
‘I only wanted to hev a try, sir. For one thing, I’d hev my muck; ‘tis all good wheat straw I’ve put down, and by winter’s end I’d hev a good heap of muck. My top end of
Layer Field is hungry for muck.’
‘Your piece of that field, like everybody else’s, gets its fair share of dunging when the cattle turn in there after harvest, Fuller. You’re just being selfish, trying to get ahead yourself at the expense of everybody else.’
Fuller shook back the limp lock of hair and there was in the quick jerky gesture something resembling that of a horse, fly-tormented.
‘Who’m I hurting, sir? Who’ll be a penny the worse for my trying to do things better fashion?”
I shall,’ said the Squire promptly. Nodding towards the erst-while kitchen, he asked with a glint of humour, ‘You don’t imagine that you are improving my property, do you? Turning the trimmest little kitchen in Suffolk into a byre. And there’s another thing! What about your poor missus, where’s she going to bake and brew? In the parlour?’