“Darn them to Heck!” he yelled, and ran after the Dean.
Bill Door worked through the long heavy afternoon, at the head of a trail of binders and stackers.
Until there was a shout, and the men ran toward the hedge.
Iago Peedbury’s big field was right on the other side. His farmhands were wheeling the Combination Harvester through the gate.
Bill joined the others leaning over the hedge. The distant figure of Simnel could be seen, giving instructions. A frightened horse was backed into the shafts. The blacksmith climbed into the little metal seat in the middle of the machinery and took up the reins.
The horse walked forward. The sparge arms unfolded. The canvas sheets started to revolve, and probably the riffling screw was turning, but that didn’t matter because something somewhere went “clonk” and everything stopped.
From the crowd at the hedge there were shouts of “Get out and milk it!”, “We had one but the end fell off!”, “Tuppence more and up goes the donkey!” and other time-honored witticisms.
Simnel got down, held a whispered conversation with Peedbury and his men, and then disappeared into the machinery for a moment.
“It’ll never fly!”
“Veal will be cheap tomorrow!”
This time the Combination Harvester got several feet before one of the rotating sheets split and folded up.
By now some of the older men at the hedge were doubled up with laughter.
“Any old iron, sixpence a load!”
“Fetch the other one, this one’s broke!”
Simnel got down again. Distant catcalls drifted toward him as he untied the sheet and replaced it with a new one; he ignored them.
Without moving his gaze from the scene in the opposite field, Bill Door pulled a sharpening stone out of his pocket and began to hone his scythe, slowly and deliberately.
Apart from the distant clink of the blacksmith’s tools, the schip-schip of stone on metal was the only sound in the heavy air.
&nb
sp; Simnel climbed back into the Harvester and nodded to the man leading the horse.
“Here we go again!”
“Any more for the Skylark?”
“Put a sock in it….”
The cries trailed off.
Half a dozen pairs of eyes followed the Combination Harvester up the field, stared while it was turned around on the headland, watched it come back again.
It clicked past, reciprocating and oscillating.
At the bottom of the field it turned around neatly.
It whirred by again.
After a while one of the watchers said, gloomily, “It’ll never catch on, you mark my words.”
“Right enough. Who’s going to want a gadget like that?” said another.
“Sure and it’s only like a big clock. Can’t do anything more than go up and down a field—”