Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life

‘Dad wants it.’

‘Funny time to cut a new rick, November.’

‘Dad wants it,’ Bert repeated, and both his eyes, the sound one and the other stared down at me with a look of absolute vacuity.

‘Going to all that trouble stacking it and thatching it and then pulling it down five months later.’

‘Dad wants it.’ Bert’s nose was running and he kept wiping it with the back of his hand and wiping the back of the hand on his trousers.

‘Come on, Bert,’ Rummins called, and the boy climbed up on to the rick and stood in the place where the thatch had been removed. He took the knife and began to cut down into the tight-packed hay with an easy-swinging, sawing movement, holding the handle with both hands and rocking his body like a man sawing wood with a big saw. I could hear the crisp cutting noise of the blade against the dry hay and the noise becoming softer as the knife sank deeper into the rick.

‘Claud’s going to take a pot at the rats as they come out.’

The man and the boy stopped abruptly and looked across the road at Claud who was leaning against the red pump with rifle in hand.

‘Tell him to put that bloody rifle away,’ Rummins said.

‘He’s a good shot. He won’t hit you.’

‘No one’s potting no rats alongside of me, don’t matter how good they are.’

‘You’ll insult him.’

‘Tell him to put it away,’ Rummins said, slow and hostile. ‘I don’t mind dogs nor sticks but I’ll be buggered if I’ll have rifles.’

The two on the hayrick watched while Claud did as he was told, then they resumed their work in silence. Soon Bert came down into the cart, and reaching out with both hands he pulled a slice of solid hay away from the rick so that it dropped neatly into the cart beside him.

A rat, grey-black, with a long tail, came out of the base of the rick and ran into the hedge.

‘A rat,’ I said.

‘Kill it,’ Rummins said. ‘Why don’t you get a stick and kill it?’

The alarm had been given now and the rats were coming out quicker, one or two of them every minute, fat and long-bodied, crouching close to the ground as they ran through the grass into the hedge. Whenever the horse saw one of them it twitched its ears and followed it with uneasy rolling eyes.

Bert had climbed back on top of the rick and was cutting out another bale. Watching him, I saw him suddenly stop, hesitate for perhaps a second, then again begin to cut, but very cautiously this time; and now I could hear a different sound, a muffled rasping noise as the blade of the knife grated against something hard.

Bert pulled out the knife and examined the blade, testing it with his thumb. He put it back, letting it down gingerly into the cut, feeling gently downward until it came again upon the hard object; and once more, when he made another cautious little sawing movement, there came that grating sound.

Rummins turned his head and looked over his shoulder at the boy. He was in the act of lifting an armful of loosened thatch, bending forward with both hands grasping the straw, but he stopped dead in the middle of what he was doing and looked at Bert. Bert remained still, hands holding the handle of the knife, a look of bewilderment on his face. Behind, the sky was a pale clear blue and the two figures up there on the hayrick stood out sharp and black like an etching against the paleness.

Then Rummins’s voice, louder than usual, edged with an unmistakable apprehension that the loudness did nothing to conceal: ‘Some of them haymakers is too bloody careless what they put on a rick these days.’

He paused, and again the silence, the men motionless, and across the road Claud leaning motionless against the red pump. It was so quiet suddenly we could hear a woman’s voice far down the valley on the next farm calling the men to food.

Then Rummins again, shouting where there was no need to shout: ‘Go on, then! Go on an’ cut through it, Bert! A little stick of wood won’t hurt the soddin’ knife!’

For some reason, as though perhaps scenting trouble, Claud came strolling across the road and joined me leaning on the gate. He didn’t say anything, but both of us seemed to know that there was something disturbing about these two men, about the stillness that surrounded them and especially about Rummins himself. Rummins was frightened. Bert was frightened too. And now as I watched them, I became conscious of a small vague image moving just below the surface of my memory. I tried desperately to reach back and grasp it. Once I almost touched it, but it slipped away and when I went after it I found myself travelling back and back through many weeks, back into the yellow days of summer – the warm wind blowing down the valley from the south, the big beech trees heavy with their foliage, the fields turning to gold, the harvesting, the haymaking, the rick – the building of the rick.

Instantly, I felt a fine electricity of fear running over the skin of my stomach.

Yes – the building of the rick. When was it we had built it? June? That was it, of course – a hot muggy day in June with the clouds low overhead and the air thick with the smell of thunder.

And Rummins had said, ‘Let’s for God’s sake get it in quick before the rain comes.’

And Ole Jimmy had said, ‘There ain’t going to be no rain. And there ain’t no hurry either. You know very well when thunder’s in the south it don’t cross over into the valley.’

Rummins, standing up in the cart handing out the pitchforks, had not answered him. He was in a furious brooding temper because of his anxiety about getting in the hay before it rained.