Rough Cider (5 page)

Precisely when George Lockwood was told about me, Γm still uncertain. I have a suspicion that his womenfolk kept me under wraps for at least a day. My introduction was stage-managed. At four the following afternoon Mrs. Lock-wood took a large basket containing freshly baked scones and a bowl of cream to the field where the harvesters were at work, and I was given the jug of cider to top up their bottles. Each man had a mug or a wooden bottle like a small tub, with a cork and an air stop. They kept me in heavy demand, excelling each other in pronouncing my name in what passed for plummy, middle-class accents. There were at least nine men and Barbara seated around the basket. Barbara’s smile so beguiled me that I spilled some of the cider I was supplying to the man on her left. He reached up and grasped my arm, momentarily startling me.

Some of the cider had spilled onto his plate. He was the only man in possession of one. It was pink with a gold rim. This seemed a curious refinement, for he was easily the largest man there—six foot two, I would guess, with a mat of dark hair on his forearms and several gaps in his teeth. One of his eyes was bloodshot and partially closed.

There was something else about him that presently registered with me: He was wearing a tie. Not a special tie with stripes like Mr. Lillicrap’s, and not elegantly tied. It was black and there were stains on it, but the wearing of it was a mark of distinction, for, I divined not a moment too soon, he was the farmer, my benefactor, Mr. Lockwood.

Still gripping my arm, he asked me something about the cider that amused the others and that I didn’t understand. Probably he was commenting on my bad aim and suggesting that I’d imbibed from the jug, because when I politely answered yes, there were chuckles all round.

Mr. Lockwood released me and held up his mug to me. I believe he said, “Have a drop more, boy. Finish it for me.”

Somerset cider has a notorious kick. Barbara tried to protest, but it was reckless to challenge the farmer’s authority in front of his men and the extra hands hired for the harvest. He silenced her with a growl, still holding the mug with the handle towards me.

I won’t claim that I felled my Goliath with one shot, but for a nine-year-old, I stood the test reasonably well. I told him I didn’t have much of a thirst. I took a sip, felt the bite of the cider on my tongue, handed back the mug, and asked politely if I could stay and help and drink the rest later.

This met with general amusement and, more important, a nod from Mr. Lockwood. When work resumed, I was hoisted to the top of one of the trailers to help load the sheaves as they were forked up.

My memories are patchy. Little else of that afternoon remains. I think Barbara must have taken me back to the farmhouse when it was obvious that I was used up. She was certainly there at the end of the day, because she came into my bedroom and told me her father had said I could stay. She put out her hand and smoothed back my hair. I have a clear recollection of the touch of her fingertips.

After that the days blur, subdued by the routine of farm and school. I’ll leave out my impressions of the Somerset education system. You want to know how I met Duke Donovan, and that’s what I’m coming to next.

To compensate for my ignorance of country ways, I told a few tall tales to my classmates about life in wartime London, the unexploded bomb in our garden, the Messerschmitt that crashed into a barrage balloon, and the undertaker with the glass eye who was known to be a German spy. They hung on every word. The only enemy action they’d experienced was the distant thud of the bombs on Bath in the Baedeker Raids the year before. Otherwise, the best they could claim was an occasional glimpse of American forces driving through the village to their base at Shepton Mallet.

A few passing GIs didn’t cut much ice with me. I was personally known to the U.S. Army. I’d been to a party— this part was true—at their base in Richmond Park. As the child of a war widow, I’d been invited there the previous Christmas for presents from a Santa with a Yankee accent, a film show, a singsong, and as much chewing gum and candy as I could stuff into my pockets.

Puffed up with the response this had from my new schoolmates, I bragged that I had so many GI friends that I could get gum whenever I wanted.

Fate has a way of dealing with braggers. My bluff was called sooner than any of us could have predicted. At lunch-time the next day we emerged from the schoolhouse and saw something that made my legs go weak. Across the village street, outside Miss Mumford’s general store, stood a jeep in the light khaki color of the U.S. Army. I dug my hands in my pockets, whistled a tune, and strolled on nonchalantly, but I knew my number was up. They challenged me to get some gum.

Like the makeshift sheriff in a Western, told that Jesse James is holding up the bank, I crossed the dusty street, watched from a discreet distance by my schoolfellows. Someone shouted, “Through the door, Theodore!”

Inside Miss Mumford’s, two GIs were buying drinks. The taller, who was Duke, was paying for a bottle of Tizer. His buddy, Harry, was eyeing the selection as if he didn’t care for the colors. He asked for milk and was told curtly that it was rationed, whether you had it fresh, evaporated, condensed, or dried. No one tangled with Miss Mumford. She offered apples, but anyone with half an eye could see that her eaters had gone soft, so Harry said he wouldn’t bother.

That was my cue. They were leaving the shop. Miss Mumford was staring at me suspiciously. In London I’d have called, “Got any gum, chum?” without even thinking about it, but I hesitated now, standing like a dummy as they passed. I followed them out to the jeep, trying to find my voice. Then I had my brain wave. I touched Harry’s sleeve and told him confidentially that I could take him to a farm where there was fresh milk to be had. Harry glanced towards Duke, who gave a shrug and indicated with his thumb that I should climb into the jeep. I suppose you could say that with that trivial gesture Duke sealed his fate.

For me it was the summit of my career as an evacuee. I stood in the back of the jeep and saluted the troops like Monty in the Western Desert. We made a sharp U-turn and roared away, with me moving my jaws in a chewing motion.

The reckoning lay ahead. The wind in our ears was deafening, so I couldn’t do any explaining in advance. I could only point the direction when the farm entrance came into view. We swung into the yard with a screech of brakes and startled chickens.

I made a rapid assessment. Farmer Lock wood kept a small heard of Friesians, but I knew full well that milk was rationed. True, there was something called the black market, only it was against the war effort, and I doubted whether Farmer Lockwood was part of it. He kept a picture of Winston Churchill over the fireplace.

My luck held, because it was Barbara who came out of the farmhouse, alerted by the noise. She was dressed for riding, in fawn-colored jodhpurs and a white sweater. A look passed between Duke and Harry that she could have jumped her horse over. They got out and introduced themselves and were away across the yard with Barbara before I was out of the jeep.

She treated it all as a joke, as if asking for milk was a gambit just to come and meet her, and of course they didn’t deny it. She blandly offered to let them take a pint themselves from her high-strung nanny goat, Dinah. The GIs wisely declined. Duke spotted a cider cask and said he wouldn’t mind something stronger, to which Barbara responded that you only got cider if you worked. ‘Okay, sweetheart,” offered Harry, unbuttoning his jacket, “so where’s the work?”

Barbara laughed and said if they were serious, they could come back on Saturday when the apple harvest started. Some of the village girls were coming to help, and she reckoned her father could use extra hands. The GIs looked at each other and said they’d both be there if they could get a pass. There were some jokes about passes that I didn’t appreciate, and then they got into their jeep and drove off, still without the milk.

As Barbara crossed the yard with me she told me I was a scamp for bringing the Yanks to the farm. It was a good thing her father hadn’t been around. If they turned up on Saturday, it would be up to me to do the explaining. I felt crushed, until she gave me a nudge and said, “Be fun if they do.”

The harvesting of the apples, I learned, was a bigger undertaking than the haymaking. Mr. Lockwood grew many of the older varieties with stirring names like Captain Liberty, Royal Somerset, and Kingston Black. More humbly, there was something called a Nurdletop. Scarlet, green, and gold, they all went into the mill together to produce enough high-quality cider to supply several public houses in Frome and Shepton Mallet. Extra labor had to be hired for each stage of the process. So, I reasoned as I lay in bed that night, Farmer Lockwood shouldn’t really object to the GIs. Even so, it was wise to broach the possibility before Saturday.

I took the opportunity the next evening. He’d finished work early and was smoking his pipe in his favorite Windsor armchair by the range. The smell of St. Julian comes back to me more strongly than our conversation. I stumbled through some kind of explanation, dreading that rural Somerset wasn’t ready for my entrepreneurial efforts, when he cut me off with a comment that anyone prepared to do a day’s work was welcome. As I came out of the kitchen Barbara gave me a large, conspiratorial wink.

The apple gathering started soon after first light on Saturday. Traditionally, women were hired as casuals and shared in the work, which was how I first met Barbara’s best friend, the publican’s daughter, Sally Shoesmith. Sally was a chunky, bright-eyed redhead with freckles and a wicked smile that may have been quite misleading. At nine I wasn’t able to judge.

It was also my introduction to Bernard, the Lockwoods’ son, who farmed Lower Gifford. I wasn’t sure whether filial duty had brought him there or the strong turnout of village girls. From my point of view he was pretty unapproachable. My point of view was mainly his hobnailed boots, for his job was to take a ladder to the “keeping apples,” like Tom Putts and Blenheim Oranges, that had to be harvested by hand, rather than shaken down by the polers. Below him, the girls jostled with their “pickers,” bucket-shaped baskets made from withies. I think it gave Bernard a sense of power deciding which of his pretty entourage he would favor, from which you’ll have gathered that I didn’t much like him. He was handsome in a craggy, sunburned way, like a man on a knitting pattern. I preferred to follow the polers.

After an hour or so my ears picked up a distant buzz along the lane adjoining the orchard. It grew into a drone and then, thrillingly, the roar of the jeep. The Yanks were coming! I flung down my basket, dashed to the gate, and opened it in time for them to drive right in among the trees. To a chorus of delighted cries everyone stopped work and surrounded the jeep. Everyone, that is to say, except Bernard, who was stranded up his ladder with an armful of choice Tom Putts.

Wisely, Duke and Harry played down the excitement and showed they’d come to work. They were, after all, over an hour late. They joined in the job of arranging the apples in pyramidal heaps to get the frost before they were pressed. They were wearing what they called their fatigues, which amused the girls, who seized on every bit of service slang and every Americanism. To us all in 1943. the GIs were exotic beings who talked like film stars.

Speaking of films, did you ever see Henry Fonda in
The Grapes of Wrath
or any of his early movies? I mention this because to my eye there was a marked resemblance between Duke Donovan and Fonda. It wasn’t just a facial thing. It was in the build of the man, his height, the head set on quite narrow shoulders, the impression he gave of being brave and vulnerable at the same time. His movements were unhurried and economical, yet there was a restlessness about him that showed most in his eyes. I think he was homesick. He laughed as much as anyone that day in the apple orchard, his teeth gleaming like Fonda’s, but his eyes didn’t join in the fun. His mind was torn.

In my childish illusions of romance, Duke and Barbara were ideally matched, and I expected them to be drawn to each other. It didn’t cross my mind that he was married, let alone a father, and I’m sure Barbara didn’t suspect it, either.

Things developed less smoothly than I hoped. When Mrs. Lockwood appeared in midmorning, carrying two steaming teapots, we all stopped for a break, and Duke sat at a distance from Barbara. Most of the men drank cool cider from the owls and firkins they’d filled at the start of the day, but the girls preferred tea. I noticed that one of the casuals hired for the picking fetched a mug for Barbara. He stretched out on the grass at her side, practically touching her. I learned that his name was Cliff and that he had no regular work. Sometimes he helped behind the bar in the local. I wouldn’t have classed him as good-looking. Tall, dark, and unhandsome. All right, say it: I was a jealous brat.

The other GI, Harry, soon made inroads with Barbara’s friend, Sally, giving her a Lucky Strike to smoke and finding bits of twig in her hair that took ages to remove. Harry was more the Cagney type, wisecracking and pugnacious. He told us he’d had three stripes and lost them for some misdemeanor. Harry worried me. I didn’t want anything to go wrong.

When we resumed, Duke took a turn up one of the trees, and I noted smugly that Barbara joined the girls working from his ladder. After a while she advised him to leave some griggling apples on the bough he was stripping. He leaned on the branch, looked down, and asked, “What’s a griggling apple, for the love of Mike?” Barbara explained the folklore that any small apples had to be left on the trees for the pixies. Some of the girls hooted with laughter, expecting the GIs to join in, but Duke listened solemnly. Dialect words and country customs fascinated him. So Farmer Lockwood, who had a dry turn of humor, called out as he passed, “Come on, you lasses! Have Lawrence got into ‘ee?” and Duke had to be told that Lazy Lawrence, the guardian spirit of orchards, transfixed anyone who tried to cheat the fairy folk.

Disturbing things happened in the orchard that September afternoon. If, like me, you don’t believe in malign forces, you may think the cider at lunch had something to do with it. Or perhaps it was just the heady excitement produced by country girls mixing with American soldiers.