“I reckon I can,” said Jack. “You dunna know what you con do ’bout tryin’.”
They passed under a high-arched bridge which Flo guessed she must have travelled over when she came from Barrow. The road swung a little rightward and went down an avenue of larches ending in a triangular space on which looked dourly more in the manner of a police station a solid stone-built pub with the curious name of Ants’ Nest. A few other houses were scattered about, but almost as though hiding.
“Mossdyche,” said Jack, and guided Mike round the end of the pub where Flo saw a narrower lane which took them curving to a shallow guggling stream. By the bridge where the stream ran unfenced for a dozen yards three cows were drinking with a girl of eight or nine standing by. She had fresh cheeks, sun-gold hair, and an innocent look. Jack shouted: “Hi, you’re lettin’ ’em drink too much; you’ll have ’em bustin’. How’s Dick?”
“All right, thank you,” answered the child primly, smiling up.
“There’s not many people you don’t know,” said Flo.
“And not many as don’t know me,” he said, as if he liked it.
They turned off leftward up a still narrower lane, as rough and twisted as a torrent bed. Mike stepped as though he had corns, and Jack did not try to hurry him. They came to the lowest whisps of cloud flowing between the hollies and hawthorns with which the track was hedged; great white smudges that looked as though they would overwhelm Mike, the float and everything, but which passed with eerie silence and scarcely any perceptible thickening of the atmosphere; whiteness almost without body. Flo liked it. Between drifts she made out under the hill on the right a tall newish house which seemed out of place by the old sunk lane. Jack turned in between squared stone pillars. “Belle View”, Flo read, and smiled for there was no view, though it was easy to imagine the lake far below. They approached the house from the end. The gravel drive spread into an oval front and then past the house were sloping gardens with two shabby greenhouses at the side. House and garden were neat, but only perfunctorily so; there was no real sign of pride. Flo stayed in the float while Jack went round the back. After a while he walked up to the greenhouses with a medium-sized man with a very small head in a small cap and small feet in thin shoes, but with a stomach like a barrel. The pair chatted and went from house to house and chatted some more, inside and outside. The stout man made as if to walk away, then turned back. Jack went round the outside of both houses very carefully. He tested many of the panes with spread fingers; and much of the wood with a pocket-knife. The stout man took his cap off and scratched the top of his cranium which was bald and unexpectedly pale, as if it had never been uncovered for a year or more. Jack put both hands in his pockets and with his coat spread out looked nearly as fat as his opponent. The stout man spat on to a cabbage top. They went back into the lower house. When they came out the stout man very deliberately shut the door and led to the upper house. Ten minutes more were spent there before they came strolling towards the float. The stout man nodded at Flo, said it was a wet day, hoisted and spat, told Jack to be good, and then waddled off round the house back. Jack grinned and said: “Got ’em,” and started Mike round.
Jack was so obviously pleased that Flo felt glad, too.
“You brought me luck,” he said; and she thought of the green pig and the heart-stone and wondered whether he believed in that sort of thing. Instinctively she knew that the answer was “No.”
“Forty-seven quid the two. I’ll grow some tomatoes now, by gee, you wait.” He chuckled. “Ben didn’t want ta part, but it’s the road; folk winna come up for ’em.” And as they went down, Mike stepping even more warily, Flo learned that Jack had already got a stove and pipes enough, he reckoned, for these two houses as well as the house he had already bought.
“Ben’s like th’ rest. He says I conna grow ’em, neither. They say it’s too cold, an’ there’s non enough sun; an’ they say th’ soil’s not right.”
“I . . . I thought any soil was all right,” said Flo.
“Well, most soil’ll grow something but there’s some as is a lot better. And some soil’ll grow one thing, an’ another soil’ll grow somethin’ else. But thing as gets me is th’ way chaps round here just thinks as their ground winna grow anythin’ on’y grass, an’ yet they never tried it.”
“Is Mr. Nadin as bad?”
“No, he’s good . . . in his way. But he’s chiefly keen on cattle, and he’s old-fashioned. He never reads, and a man as doesn’t can’t keep up-to-date . . . unless, of course, he goes to special lectures an’ demonstrations. But he doesn’t.”
“Do you?”asked Flo.
“I never get chance. But I study up when I con, an’ I reckon I’ll be able ta grow tomatoes an’ lettuce an’ chrysanthemums an’, happen, a few other things.”
Flo laughed. “You’re always thinking about tomatoes. D’you dream about them?”
“I dunna,” said Jack, laughing also. “I’m too busy; when I go ta bed I sleep.”
“Suppose the soil round here’s good for something else, an’ not for tomatoes?”
“I think it will. But if it winna, I’ll get some, or make some as will. I’ll shovel up a few thousand mole-heaps an’ fetch a few hundred sacks o’ leaf-mould from th’ beech woods yonder.” They had come out from beneath the railway bridge again, and he waved to the top of the hill behind them. “It’s grand stuff for potting,” he went on, his pale eyes looking at her gravely. “You know, I’m non so set on tomatoes that I winna try anythin’ else. But I think there’d be a good sale for fresh tomatoes round here, an’ I’d like to sell ’em ta folk so that they’d know what real fresh home-grown ones are like.”
“You’d sooner grow things than be like Mr. Nadin?” said Flo, studying him and wondering what would happen to him eventually.
“I like animals, in a way; but I’d sooner grow things. I dunna know why,” he confessed. “There’s somethin’ in the touch of the soil, somehow, as makes me . . . specially in spring when it comes warm after bein’ clammy . . . Have you ever dug your hands in a mole-heap then?”
“I haven’t.”
“Next spring, just try it. It’s dry an’ warm, it’s like corn meal, it’s . . . well, somehow there’s something wonderful about it. Nobody knows exactly what’s in soil, an’ what it’ll do an’ what it winna do. I . . . I let it run through me fingers, an’ I wonder about it. If anybody saw me doin’ it, they’d think me daft.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Flo gently.
“Trouble is, most folk think they know everything specially ’bout things like soil as there’s plenty of; an’ the rest don’t care, anyway.”
They had reached the straight that ran nearest to the lake. Through blackthorn and hawthorn bushes Flo saw Dick Goldbourn sitting patiently with his rod over the water.
“D’you think Dick Goldbourn cares?” she asked.
Jack looked, too, but did not answer at once. Then he said: “Dick’s had a hard time. He’s a decent chap; I like Dick.”
“But does he care about things as you think he ought to?” Flo persisted, not really knowing why.
“Nay,” Jack laughed, his mood and tone changing, “you’re non goin’ ta catch me that way. Live an’ let live. I dunna think I could fish all day, but I’m no good at fishin’. You should ’a seen me t’other day trying ta help him land a pike; it welly drowned me.”