Page 74 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

‘A baling machine?’

‘’Sright, m’lord. You loads the hay into a kind of hopper, and a big tamper comes and squashes it down, and pushes it into a sort of funnel, and out the other end comes a square bale, all pressed and tidy and tied up with string.’ He grinned infectiously. ‘Gor, what’ll they think of next! But it’d see an end of all this tedious-hard pitchforking, my lord. And you can store a lot more bales in the same space as loose hay.’

‘I suppose so,’ Giles said. ‘I suppose machinery is the future of farming.’

‘The future, m’lord. But right now I’d better get back to work.’ And he bent his magnificent back again to the task.

Giles moved on, found another cart, and called to the man up on the load. ‘Shall I take over from you? I’d be no use at forking up.’ Very shortly he had taken his place in process. The heat settled on him like a heavy hand, and he was soon sweating. The hay began its usual maddening game of inserting scratchy tendrils down his collar and up his sleeves and through his buttonholes. The lovely smell of hay was in his nostrils, its unpleasant dust coated his tongue; his unaccustomed hands grew hot with friction. The dogs had gone off to join the farmers’ collies and terriers in a fine game of rat-and-mouse hunting. The hay flew up and he levelled it. The work took him over and he lost track of time until the man below said, ‘That’ll do,’ and he climbed down to stretch his back and watch the cart trundle away.

A woman was coming up the row with a jug of water and a tin mug, which she offered to him before she looked up and saw who he was. A blush spread over her face, and she said, ‘Oh, your lordship, I’m ever so sorry! I didn’t see it was you. You can’t use this after everyone’s been at it.’

‘I certainly can,’ Giles said kindly, but when he took the mug from her he turned away so that he could wipe the rim on his shirt end before he drank.

When he handed it back, she said, ‘Why don’t you go over in the shade a bit, your lordship, till the cart comes back. There’s victuals over there, for folk taking a breather.’

At intervals along the hedgerow there were trees, and it was good to get out of the sun and into their shade. The cloud bank had climbed halfway up the sky, but still there wasn’t a breath of wind. He joined a group sitting on the grass, and they shifted over with silent comradeship to make room for him. A large pie cut into wedges was lying on a cloth in the middle of their circle, and one of them picked up a wedge and offered it to him, saying shyly, ‘Scuse fingers! Mrs Webley’s veal an’ ham, m’lord.’

He took it with a smile of thanks, and his benefactor seemed delighted with the small attention. Everyone was chewing, no one was speaking, but he felt a brotherly acceptance, which was more pleasure than the ache of his muscles was pain. He wondered if other earls of Stainton before him had helped with the harvest. Not his father, of course, but perhaps in an earlier age, before earls got so grand . . . He found his mind drifting, and felt he could have slept right there and then in the blessed shade of this tree . . . He was almost gone when the dogs found him again and came tramping in to wash his face and try to climb on his lap, delighted to discover him down at their level for once. Isaac got the last morsel of pie out of his fingers before he knew what was happening.

And his cart had returned – a cart, anyway. He heaved himself to his feet, shoving the dogs away, and stepped out into the brazen sunshine again, noting only out of the side of his attention that Alice was there, standing under the shade of the next tree along, and talking animatedly to Axe Brandom. She had always liked hanging around the forge, so she knew him quite well. Always nutty on horses, little Alice – and it didn’t look as if she’d grown out of it yet.

The sky was completely grey now, and a slight wind had got up, but gave no relief from the heat, or from the tiny black flies that stuck to the sweat on every exposed patch of skin and flew maddeningly into his mouth. Thunder flies, the local people called them. There was that oppressive feeling to the air that said not just rain was coming, but a proper storm. Now everyone worked in intense silence, frantic to get the last of the harvest in. Giles’s hands were sore, but he ignored the coming blisters in the common purpose. Now men hurried to a new row as soon as one was finished; no one rested in the shade. Not that there was shade any more. With the sun hidden, everything was the same depthless grey.

A false twilight crept up as the clouds darkened. The breeze grew stronger, but fitful; there was a metallic taste on the air. Only one row left. The men ran to it, started forking madly. Every cart, every man was on the last row. Giles saw Alice, driving a different cart now, drawn by a square-jawed black. Hay flew at him non-stop from two forkers, barely giving him time to level it. The sky was plum-coloured; some of the horses were growing nervous; the cart he was on jerked back and forth as the horse tried to start and was checked.

Cart full. He jumped down, landed badly and stumbled, was caught by a large hand as hard as horn and set back on his feet without a word. He ran down the line to another cart. Every man, having cleared a section, ran to the next. The air was prickling with electricity. The sky was so dark it was hard to see. Nearly done – nearly done! A sharp little wind whipped cold past his sweaty cheeks, sending loose strands of hay whirling. A horse flung its head up and whinnied.

‘Here it comes!’ someone shouted.

But it was lightning first, a great searing blue gash of it that cracked like a whip, lighting the scene for a second, leaving a smell of ozone behind. And then a huge boom of thunder, ridiculously overdone, as though the god’s hand had slipped. One-grandfather-two-grandfather, he had counted. Two miles off. Carts were dashing for the farmyard, drivers urging the horses into a clumsy trot. Last little bit. There was no place or pitchfork for him, but he couldn’t leave. Four men forking like devils, one man on the top, the driver holding the horse back with difficulty, ready to race. And the last bit was up, the cart was on the move, the forkers jumped and caught hold of the sides, and the one on the tail grabbed Giles’s arm and shouted, ‘Come on!’ He made a stupid, tired, clumsy leap, got his sore hands over the edge of the tail gate, scrabbled for a foothold, was yanked into place by an arm more muscled than his would ever be, and was carried away.

And the rain came: large round drops like pennies, warm, falling separate onto the shorn field, making dark circles in the dust on the cart’s rim. The horse was cantering, ears back, as if demons were pulling its tail, and it was all Giles could do to hold on as the wheels hit uneven places and the cart leaped into the air like a startled cat. When they reached the farmyard, he almost fell off, watched it go on towards the big barn. There was nothing for him to do there. Every man who had a fork was waiting to get it in. The rain increased, not the big warm drops now, but the cold hard ones, and even as he watched the last cart being emptied, there was another crack of lighting, and the heavens opened.

Rain streamed into his eyes, and he stood stupidly, trying to wipe it away, like trying to divert a waterfall with a teaspoon. Suddenly Alice was beside him, grinning at him through the sheeting rain. ‘Glorious, isn’t it?’ she shouted. She was soaking wet, tendrils of hair glued to her cheeks, conducting the rain to her chin and thence to her chest. Seeing the state of her jerked him out of his stupor. He grabbed her arm and ran for the stables where he had left Vipsania. Everyone was seeking shelter. Someone was unharnessing the last horse from the last cart and leading it away. The cart was empty. The hay was in.

In the shelter of the stable doorway, Alice turned. ‘We did it!’ she cried, elated.

‘That last lot might be a bit damp, but they’ll save most of it,’ he said.

She looked at him, shaking her head at his prosaic response. ‘Giles, we did it!’ she repeated. ‘It was a heroic battle, and we won!’ She smiled hugely, and he found himself grinning back at her.

‘What a day,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been so tired.’

‘Worse than a day’s hunting,’ she agreed.

‘I shan’t be able to move tomorrow. You’re soaked through,’ he said, touching her cheek. It was icy cold. ‘We need to get you home and into a hot bath.’

She made an economical gesture out of the door, beyond which nothing could be seen but the rain, a flickering impenetrable sheet, with little silvery spurts and coronets where the drops hit the ground like bullets. ‘We can’t take the horses out in that,’ she said.

A hunch of wet clothes, a dripping hat, and a screwed-up face in between poked itself into the doorway for as long as it took to shout, ‘Beer and hot taties at the house!’ and disappear.

Alice and Giles looked at each other. ‘Hot potatoes,’ Alice said. ‘I’m starving!’

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

The storm strode and bellowed about the tops, lightning cracked, and the rain pounded, rushed, rivered. Mrs Webster and Rose were busy calming the maids who were afraid of thunder and lightning, those who had been set off by the ones who were afraid, and those who just relished an excuse to have a good fit of hysterics. Kitty was in the nursery, calming Nanny and Jessie, and keeping an eye on her boy, who slept unmoved through thunderclaps that made the women shriek. Moss and Sebastian mustered the men of the house to fasten shutters, place buckets under leaks, and stop up ill-fitting windows and cracks under doors. The stable staff were fully engaged in calming the unsettled horses and diverting the streams of water coming down the hill away from the stalls.

Nobody had time to wonder where Giles and Alice were, although Giddins, the head man, did wonder anxiously what had become of Vipsania and Biscuit, and to hope that they had been put safely under shelter before this lot started.