“More than anything.”
“It’ll be yours, then. A farm needs one owner, and I don’t think as your brother would be fond of the life, any road{6}.”
“John wants to be an engineer,” David said.
“And he’ll be likely enough to make a good one. What had you thought of being, then?”
“I hadn’t thought of anything.”
“I shouldn’t say it, maybe,” said his grandfather, “since I’ve never seen ought of any other kind of life but what I glimpse at Lepeton Market; but I don’t know of another life that can give as much satisfaction. And this is good land, and a good lie{7} for a man that’s content with his own company and few neighbours. There’s stone slabs under the ground in the Top Meadow, and they say the valley was held as a stronghold once, in bygone times. I don’t reckon you could hold it now, against guns and aeroplanes, but whenever I’ve been outside I’ve always had a feeling that I could shut the door behind me when I come back through the pass.”
“I felt that,” David said, “when we came in.”
“My grandfather,” said David’s grandfather, “had himself buried here. They didn’t like it even then, but in those days they had to put up with some things they didn’t like. They’ve got more weight behind them today, damn them! A man should have the rights to be buried in his own ground.”
He looked across the green spears of wheat.
“But I shan’t fret so greatly over leaving it, if I’m leaving it to my own blood.”
On another afternoon, John stood on the southern rim and, after staring his fill, began to descend again into the valley.
The Lepe, from its emergence to the point where it left the valley altogether, hugged these southern slopes, and for that reason they could only be scaled from the eastern end of the valley. But the boy realized now that, once above the river, it could not bar him from the slopes beneath which it raced and boiled. From the ground, he had seen a cleft in the hill face which might be a cave. He climbed down towards it, breaking new ground.
He worked his way down with agility but with care, for although quick in thought and movement he was not foolhardy. He came at last to the cleft, perhaps fifteen feet above the dark swirling waters, and found it to be no more than that. In his disappointment, he looked for some new target of ambition. Directly over the river’s edge, rock swelled into something like a ledge. From there, perhaps, one could dangle one’s legs in the rushing water. It was less than a cave would have been, but better than a return, baulked of any satisfaction, to the farmland.
He lowered himself still more cautiously. The slope was steep, and the sound of the Lepe had a threatening growl to it. The ledge, when he finally reached it, gave little purchase{8}.
By now, however, the idea had come to obsess him—just one foot in the water; that would be enough to meet the objective he had set himself. Pressed awkwardly against the side of the hill, he reached down with his hand to unfasten the sandal on his right foot. As he did so, his left foot slipped on the smooth rock. He clutched frantically, aware of himself falling, but there was no hold for his hands. He fell and the waters of the Lepe—chill even in midsummer, and savagely buffeting—took him.
He could swim fairly well for a boy of his age, but he had no chance against the violence of the Lepe. The current pulled him down into the deeps of the channel that the river had worn for itself through centuries before the Beverleys, or any others, had come to farm its banks. It rolled him like a pebble along its bed, as though to squeeze breath and life from him together. He was aware of nothing but its all-embracing violence and his own choking pulse.
Then, suddenly, he saw that the darkness about him was diminishing, yielding to sunlight filtered through water still violent but of no great depth. With his last strength, he struggled into an upright position, and his head broke through to the air. He took shuddering breath, and saw that he was near the middle of the river. He could not stand, for the river’s strength was too great, but he half-ran, half-swam with the current as the Lepe dragged him towards the pass that marked the valley’s end.
Once out of the valley, the river took a quieter course. A hundred yards down, he was able to swim awkwardly, through relatively calm water, to the farther bank, and pull himself up on to it. Drenched and exhausted, he contemplated the length of the tumbling flood down which, in so short a time, he had been carried. He was still staring when he heard the sound of a pony-trap{9} coming up the road and, a few moments later, his grandfather’s voice.
“Hey, there, John! Been swimming?”
He got to his feet unsteadily, and stumbled towards the trap. His grandfather’s arms took him and lifted him.
“You’ve had a bit of a shaking, lad. Did you fall in then?”
His mind remained shocked; he told as much as he could, flat-voiced, in broken sentences. The old man listened.
“It looks like you were born for a hanging{10}. A grown man wouldn’t give overmuch for his chances if he’d gone in like that. And you broke surface with your feet still on the bottom, you say? My father used to tell of a bar in the middle of the Lepe, but nobody was like to try it. It’s deep enough by either bank.”
He looked at the boy, who had begun to shiver, more from the aftermath{11} of his experience than from anything else.
“No sense in me going on talking all afternoon, though. We must get you back, and into dry clothes. Come on there, Flossie!”
As his grandfather cracked the small whip, John said quickly: “Grandfather—you won’t say anything to Mummy, will you? Please!”
The old man said: “How shall we not, then? She can’t but see you’re soaked to the bone.”
“I thought I might dry myself… in the sun.”
“Ay, but not this week! Still… you don’t want her to know you’ve had a ducking? Are you feared she’ll scold you?”
“No.”
Their eyes met. “Ah, well,” said his grandfather, “I reckon I owe you a secret, lad. Will it do if I take you to the Hillens and get you dried there? You shall have to be dried somewhere.”
“Yes,” John said, “I don’t mind that. Thank you, Grandfather.”
The wheels of the trap crunched over the rough stone road as they passed through the gap and the Hillen farm came into view ahead of them. The old man broke the silence between them.
“You want to be an engineer, then?”
John looked away from his fascinated watching of the rushing Lepe. “Yes, Grandfather.”
“You wouldn’t take to farming?”
John said cautiously: “Not particularly.”
His grandfather said, with relief: “No, I thought not.”
He began to say more, but broke off. It was not until they were within hail of the Hillen farm buildings that he said:
“I’m glad of it. I love the land more than most, I reckon, but there are some terms on which it isn’t worth having. The best land in the world might as well be barren if it brings bad blood between brothers.”
Then he reined up the pony, and called out to Jess Hillen.
ONE
A quarter of a century later, the two brothers stood together by the banks of the Lepe. David lifted his stick and pointed far up the slope of the hill.
“There they go!”
John followed his brother’s gaze to where the two specks toiled their way upwards. He laughed.
“Davey setting the pace as usual, but I would put my money on Mary’s stamina for first-over-the-top.”
“She’s a couple of years older, remember.”
“You’re a bad uncle. You favour the nephew too blatantly.”