‘So what brings you here then? Why did you leave Liverpool?’
‘Oh, I travelled about. Done this and that. You know how it goes.’
We worked on all morning with Sticks chelping in my ear. At lunchtime the farmer brought bread and ale. I asked for water.
‘What’s wrong with ale, lad?’
I had no intention of turning into a Hindley.
‘Nothing, sir, I just prefer God’s water.’
‘Well, there’s a stream up yonder you can drink from. Or there’s the well in the yard.’
After we’d eaten we swapped around. Me and Sticks set to work on the wall. Behind us was a birch wood and down the valley the farm and the outbuildings. We could see the thatched roofs from where we grafted. I shifted the stones into different sizes, heaping them into sets, saving the large uneven stones for the coping. I enjoyed the work even though it was slow going, like piecing together a puzzle. Each stone had to be carefully selected so that it sat just right with its mates. We started with the largest, heaviest stones, for the foundation of the wall, working up so that it got slimmer as we built. Every now and again we would strengthen it with through stones that hitched the two sides. We chose the flat side of the stones to face the wall, filling in the gap between the two sides with the odd-shaped smaller stones left behind, then the large, boulder-like ones as coping to top the wall and make it solid. The sun was up and the larks were singing way above our heads. So high in the sky I couldn’t actually see them. I saw a puttock being attacked by two crows and later the same crows attacked a glead that was twice their size. It’s just one battle after another, I thought. Even in these placid skies.
‘Had a problem with rats last week. The barn was overrun with them. Had to get the rat-catcher in with his dogs. Took him the best part of the day to flush them out and even then he didn’t get them all,’ said Sticks as he looked to place the stone in his hand.
‘Well, where there’s hens there’s rats,’ I said.
‘You’re right there.’
‘And where there’s swine there’s rats.’
‘True enough. Where there’s folks there’s rats,’ he said and laughed. ‘Seems, sometimes, folks and rats are the same thing.’
We worked on in silence for a time, selecting the right stones, placing them, then finding a better stone for the job and starting again. For every three we laid we’d have to go back a stone. After we had built about half a yard, Sticks stopped working and took out his clay pipe. He sat on one of the stones and stuffed the bowl of the pipe with tobacco. He snapped off the end of the pipe and took out a striker and a brimstone match. He held the striker to the match until the sparks caught. Then he held the lighted match to the bowl. He puffed out smoke and smiled at his success.
‘What’s your vice then?’
‘Eh?’
‘Do you play cards at all?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘We usually have a game after supper. Ace of hearts, faro, basset, hazard. What’s your preference?’
On rainy days I’d played hazard with you plenty of times, Cathy. When the storms outside raged even too ferociously for our tastes. But the other games I’d never heard of.
‘I’ll probably sit this one out,’ I said.
‘No head for gambling, eh?’
‘Need to earn some money first.’
‘There’s a tavern up the road. There’s skittles and ring-thebull every night if that’s more your tipple.’
‘I’m not much of a player.’
‘There’s a cockfight at least once a week, sometimes a fistfight. If you’ve no taste for blood there’s always dancing.’
‘I’m not much of a dancer.’
‘Suit yourself. But if you work hard you’ve got to play hard. The one goes with the other,’ he said.
He finished his pipe and put it in his pocket. We worked on all through the afternoon. By the end of the day we’d built up two yards of wall. We cleaned our tools with rags and stored them safe for the evening, then we traipsed down the hill for supper. Sarah, the farmer’s wife, served up oatmeal, bacon and potatoes. She was such a wee thing that I couldn’t help but picture her union with Dan Taylor and wince at the prospect. Like an ox on top of a stoat. The farmer rolled out a barrel of beer. He untapped it and poured the beer into large flagons. He handed them around.
‘Not for me, thanks.’
‘That’s half your wages.’
‘I don’t drink beer more than I need to slake my thirst.’
‘Ah, spirits more your choice?’
‘I don’t drink spirits.’
‘I’ll have his portion,’ Jethro said, a short, stocky man with red hair.
‘Well, don’t think I’ll be paying you otherwise,’ the farmer said.
‘Leave him be,’ said his wife. ‘Can I get you anything else?’
‘Water if you’ve got it, please.’
‘There’s buttermilk?’
She fetched me an earthen pot of buttermilk.
The farmer seemed pleased with my work and said that he would take me on. For all my labour I was to be paid five shillings a week and a gallon of beer a day. I would drink what I needed to slake my thirst and sell the rest to the other labourers at thruppence a pint. If I could sell four pints a day, that would be another shilling, doubling my wage to ten shilling a week.
After I’d eaten I took a walk roundabouts. The farm consisted of a barn, a parlour, a dairy, peat-house, stables and mistal. There was also a chicken coop away from the buildings, with a fenced-in run where the birds could scrat. A dozen hens and a handsome cock. The window of the dairy had the word ‘Dairy’ carved into its lintel. I’d seen this before when we’d been out walking one time, Cathy. I remember you telling me that this was to ensure it would not be liable for the window tax. Another way the rich robbed from the poor.
I walked up the lane. A mile from the farmhouse, there was a short turn by a clump of sycamore. The lane was narrow and next to this a church. It was a small, steep-roofed, stone building, with a few arched windows in a stone tower, rising scarcely above the sycamore tops, with an iron staff and vane on one corner. There was a small graveyard, enclosed by a hedge, and in the corner of this, but with three doors opening in front upon the lane, was a long crooked old cottage. On one of the stone thresholds, a peevish-looking woman was lounging, and before her, lying on the ground in the middle of the land, were two girls playing with a kitten. They stopped as I came near and rolled out of the way, while I passed by them. One of the girls laughed, and the other whispered and pointed. The woman said something in a sharp voice. I wondered what she’d said and who she was. I felt that in some way I was being judged. Though they seemed far from a position of authority.
I wandered around the other side of the farm. Past the farmyard was another huge barn, a wagon-shed, the farmhouse, and the piggeries I’d ligged in the previous night. Close to was a mountain of manure that steamed and festered. The farmyard was divided by a wall, and milch cows were accommodated in the separate divisions. It was quite a place the farmer and his wife had. I wondered how he’d come by it. By hard graft or by cunning theft? Or by being born into it? Which is another kind of theft.
I made my way back to the outbuilding where the men were at their leisure.
Sticks asked me where I’d been. I told him about my perambulations and of the sharp-tongued woman.
‘That’s the wife of the farmer’s son,’