“Can I watch?” Brian asked, mopping bacon-fat from his plate with a piece of bread.
“As long as you don’t get in anybody’s way,” Merton said. “Your grandmother’ll be busy. Farmer ’Awkins is goin’ ter send flour and bacon so’s she can mek the farm ’ands’ dinner. They’ll eve it in the yard ’ere.”
Bay rose and poppies were pictures of midsummer fires that surprised him at the turn of each hedge corner when crossing to spread the harvest news among Lakers and Arlingtons. He walked between white mats of daisies, rugs of buttercup, patches of yellow dead-eyed ragwort peeping from hedge bottoms, and entered the territory of a herd of cows. A breeze came between sparse prickly bushes and he whistled away the too-hard stares of the big dumb animals that slowly surrounded him. He could easily imagine becoming afraid, but walked whistling on, till the brace that stood in his path moved to one side and changed the circle into a horseshoe, leaving him free to walk out to the Arlingtons’ cottage.
“Is Ken in?” he asked.
No, he wasn’t, but his mother stood in the doorway, holding a colander of shelled peas, a small woman harassed from too much work, whose sharp, quick eyes reminded him of little Miss Braddely at the dinner-centre. “He’s gone to get some blackberries.”
Brian made for the dark glades of the wood, treading an undergrowth way from point to point of a map pockmarked on his mind, until the protesting scream of Brenda leapt to him through a belt of bushes. Ken and Harry were monkey-swinging on a branch that barely held them, while Alma and Brenda filled their frocks with blackberries below. Brian broke himself a stick, ripped away twigs and leaves. Harry Laker came down to earth, doubled from the impact and sprang straight like a Japanese doll. “They’re playing,” Brenda protested again, “while we work; it ain’t fair.”
She was on tiptoe, stretching her fingers for the richest clump. “I’ll get them,” Brian said, plucking two at a time. He hadn’t given Brenda time to reply, and she spurned his offer, retorting: “No, don’t bother, I can get them,” but she slipped and clawed her arm so that blood and blackberry juice mixed on it.
“Wipe it with my hanky,” he said.
Crimson with shame and anger, she sucked away the blood as if it were milk. “I don’t want your hanky.”
“All right then,” he said, “don’t have it.” Ken had a claspknife that cut through wood like chocolate, so they made bows, and launched into a game of Robin Hood. With aprons of blackberries Brenda and Alma sat on a tree trunk by the stream, and when the game of Robin Hood had worn itself out Ken shouted: “Let’s see’f they’ve got many berries yet. That’s not many,” he said, breaking through the bushes. “I’ll bet you’ve been eating some.”
“No, we ain’t,” Brenda denied. “They got spilled.”
“She did eat ’em,” Alma accused, “our Ken.”
Brenda turned: “Clatfart! She’s had a lot as welclass="underline" look at her mouth.” Alma wiped away telltale stains that weren’t there, but Ken settled the argument: “All right, yo’ two’s had a lot, so we’ll finish ’em off. Come on, Brian. Come on, Harry”—thrusting his hand into the apron. “You big ’ogs!” Brenda shouted. “Gerroff!”
Ken smacked his lips, remembered the promise to take some home, so all began another collection. “They’re mowing corn in the field near our house next week,” Brian said, putting a blackberry into his mouth.
Brenda was distant: “Are they?” He was about to eat another, but dropped it into her apron. “You’re a greedy ’og,” she said. “You’re eating more than you put in my pina.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are, because I’m counting ’em.”
“There’s plenty more,” he said, reaching to the bush top. “Is your grandad going to cut the corn?” She looked at him with brown inquisitive eyes.
“No, Farmer Hawkins’ men are doing it.”
They walked down a path almost closed in by bushes. “I might come, then,” she conceded.
At the stream’s narrowest point Alma was nervous and wouldn’t cross. Ken found a large stone and plunged it into the middle with such force that everyone leapt to the bushes for fear of being splashed. “You needn’t a thrown it in like that,” Brenda cried. “It’s a steppin’-stone for our Alma.” She put her foot on it, swung to another stone, became rigid at seeing the distance left to cross.
“Go on,” Ken called. “You’ll be all right.”
A wave of panic masked her face, and with a sudden shrill cry she collapsed into the water, a dozen blackberries bobbing in the disturbance. Ken hauled her out, bedraggled and shivering.
“Oo you won’t ’alf cop it, our Ken,” Brenda sang with a dead-set serious face. “Oo you’ll cop it. Not ’alf!”
“I didn’t push her in,” he shouted, “it’s your fault. You knew she was going to fall, so you should have grabbed her.” They walked out of the wood, arguing bitterly, Alma a silent round-faced heroine shivering between them.
Still in bed, Brian heard work going on in the field: horses neighing and the jingle of harness, men shouting to one another, and harvest machines splutter-chugging up and down the lane. He ran to the window in his shirt: it was true, right enough, they’d started; pulled on his trousers and walked downstairs holding shoes and socks. His grandmother laid some breakfast. “The tea’s nearly cold, lazybones, but I din’t bother to wake you because I knew the noise’d do it sooner or later.” She poured a mug of tea: “Anyway, it’s on’y eight o’clock, so you’ve plenty of time.”
He washed, and bolted through the hedge. Merton was talking to Farmer Hawkins, so he stayed back. Drays and wagons stood in spaces already cut, and Brian felt a lingering fear of the huge juggernaut wheels of the wagons because three years ago near haymaking time he had asked his grandfather: “What do they carry the corn off in?” “Drays and wagons, Nimrod.” “But wagons eat you,” he exclaimed. Merton cried in surprise: “Eat you? Wagons?” “I read about it at school,” Brian said. “Well, if you did, all I can say is they teach you some funny things,” Merton laughed. Brian was disconcerted: “Well, wagons do eat you, because Sent George killed one.” “He must ’ave ’ad a bit o’ bother, then, stabbin’ the wheels,” Merton said mischievously. “I suppose it was loaded wi’ bottles of ale, and that’s why he wanted to kill it!” Lydia broke in: “Sent George didn’t kill a wagon, Brian. It was a dragon he killed.” “Ah!” Merton exclaimed. “I thought there was a catch in it somewhere.”
Even now Brian half expected a snorting scaly monster to come charging at him and felt disappointed on seeing a clumsy inoffensive thing on four wheels unable to move without the help of horses. At dinner-time he went down the lane to fetch Merton a quart of ale and with the change from a shilling bought himself an ice-cream cornet. A wind had risen, and though a hot sun shone, someone expected there’d be rain tomorrow, so they had to finish the field today. Brian sat on the gate and watched the wheat swaying in a charmed dance under the wind that fell on it from the long embankment of the railway. It turned and lifted like a gentle sea of yellow and gold. The field had shrunk since morning, was half the size of yesterday, would soon be a mere wasteground of short stems that stuck into slippers that walked over them. All heads were lifted and lowered, then went in a beautiful movement all at once from side to side as if making the most of a narrowing existence and knowing that by evening it would be flat and finished.
Something was wrong. Everyone stood around a horse that, still in the wagon-shafts, lay on its side, half-strangled and tilting the cart, which was in danger of falling. “What’s up?” Brian asked his grandfather.
“That ’oss’s gone mad.”