While the Sun Shines

"You Were Hired as a tractor driver and that's what you'll do on this farm, or get out," he said.

"I was hired by your father, not you," I said.

"Same thing," he said. "I'm running the place while he's away."

That was the whole trouble. If Mr. Cartwright hadn't wrenched his back and gone off to hospital, the say-so would have been his and then there'd have been no question of mowing that field. Not after what happened to Daniel.

But of course the son, Robert, he'd got his knife into me. He wanted me out of there, and it was all the same to him whether I refused an order and gave him the chance to sack me or whether I went ahead and the tractor rolled on me and put me in hospital or in the graveyard. He wouldn't sleep or eat any worse. He was one of the hard sort: red-faced, thick-legged, with that cold stare. Even then, he might have turned out all right if it hadn't been for her. What she put him through, it made me feel sorry even for him, at times. He must have felt he couldn't trust another man within 20 miles of her. Those eyes! And goodlooking with it. "My husband doesn't let me even look at another man," she said to me, that time we were alone in the kitchen. And considering the way she looked at them, I didn't blame him.

Not that I wanted any. I'm a married man and I get on all right with my wife. And if you're all right at home, why go about looking for it? Nothing messes things up faster than that. And with two kids to feed and young Jimmy starting to school, I didn't want to give up this job, right in the middle of the summer. In Sussex a good tractor driver can always get work, but by early July the farms are all staffed up, and it would have been building-site work. I don't like that.

So there we were. I wanted to stay on, Mr. Cartwright was quite satisfied with my work, but young Mr. Robert wanted me out because he thought his wife was looking at me. That's a laugh. She'd have looked at any man who wasn't a hundred years old. They'd have had to hire a ghost to drive the tractor if they wanted to be sure of keeping her on the straight and narrow. And she was quite safe with me anyway, if he'd only known it. It was on the tip of my tongue, once or twice, to tell him so, but of course I couldn't. It wasn't possible to touch on the matter at all, it was such a sore spot with him. Had she given him trouble with other men before? Or was it just that he was jealous and knew she was that way inclined, you might say, and went mad every time he saw her rest her eyes on another bloke? I didn't know and I didn't care. I just wanted to drive the tractor and take a fair week's wage home. But it wasn't part of my job to kill myself.

"Look," I said, "I can drive a tractor as well as anybody. I've driven every type and done every kind of work. But not across that field. It's too steep for a tractor, and that's the end of it."

"If that's the end of it, you can pick up your cards and go today," he said, giving me that hard stare out of his light-blue eyes. "There's fifteen quid worth of hay on that slope alone." And he walked off, into the house, before I could answer. All very well for him. But I'd seen Daniel since the accident and I knew that Daniel would never drive a tractor again.

He'd been plowing on this very steep slope, the one you can see from the main road. It's a big field and most of it isn't so bad, but about halfway along it goes very steep and then, right in the middle of the steepest bit, there's a big bulge. The ground just seems to come out, suddenly, and then go back again. I suppose it was all right for horses. And since tractors came in, I don't believe they used that field for anything but grazing. But they must have had a change of policy, one way or another. I wasn't in these parts then and I don't know. What I do know is that they sent Daniel out to plow it with the big old tractor they had then, and he never complained or hesitated, just drove it straight along the slope, and when it got to the bulge, it rolled over on him and crushed his pelvis. He'll never drive a tractor again. And he's 50; too late to learn another job.

I walked over to the tractor and stood looking at it in the sunshine. It was a new one, bright yellow. Even the tires hadn't got muddy yet, and the paint was in showroom condition. Mr. Cartwright had made a great point of how they were getting a new one that would be more stable than the one that rolled on Daniel. As if there was all that difference between one tractor and another. A tractor's a tractor, and when it starts to roll, it rolls, and if you're driving, you just go over with it. Some of the caterpillar-track jobs are safer, I admit, but this was an ordinary farm type.

I just couldn't make up my mind. Nobody wants to get killed or badly injured just for a bit of hay. On the other hand, I knew he'd be glad of the chance to sack me. And as if to chime in with that thought, out of the farmhouse comes the girl who's the cause of the blasted mess I'm in.

She gave me that come-on look as she went past. Of course, her face was turned the opposite way from the house. He was probably watching her with a shotgun in his big meaty hands. Yvonne, her name was. I'd Yvonne her. Causing nothing but a lot of trouble.

"Robert tells me you're going mowing this morning," she said, all innocent.

"Expect so," I said, and I turned to bend over the tractor's oil tank. It was quite full, I knew that, but I didn't want her sending me any more of those signals. I'm as human as anybody, but I had serious thoughts on my mind.

She clicked past me--she was wearing some kind of foreign wooden shoes and a simple print dress. Together they added up to something far from simple, if you follow me. I kept my eyes well down on the dipstick until she went back into the house.

Then I thought, well, I might make a start, at any rate. There was all the rest of the field to do. If I decided not to do the bulge, when I got to it, that would mean the sack, but at least I'd mow the rest of the hay, for Mr. Cartwright's sake. He was a decent old bloke, and he couldn't do anything on the farm himself, now that his back was bad, so the work would get behind anyway. So I got into the seat and started the engine. I'd been working with this tractor since I came to the farm, a matter of three or four weeks, and it handled pretty well, I must say.

The cutter was already fixed on behind. I'd seen to that the night before. It was the type of cutter that has no wheels of its own, just fastens onto the back of the tractor and has one lever to stop and start it and another to move it up and down. You keep it raised till you get to the grass you're going to cut and then you lower it as you go along each row and raise it again when you get to the end. It takes a lot of patience, because you have to keep your eye on it all the time, as well as steer the tractor, and if the ground is uneven, you have to keep reversing and going back over bits you've missed through not bringing the cutter down low enough. If you bring it down too far, it digs into the ground. It's fiddling work, going back five and six times on every row; you're lucky if you get finished with one medium-sized field in half a day, and then you're dead tired with concentrating so hard and twisting round all the time on your seat. And on your own, of course, all the time, never anybody to pass the time of day with or have a joke like you would with your mates in building-site work. Then they say tractor drivers get paid a lot. And on top of that to get rolled on like Daniel.

So I went down to the field. Mary had given me some sandwiches and a flask of tea. I decided to mow the rest of the field, leaving out the bit where Daniel had bought it, and then go down to the pub and have a beer with my sandwiches and leave the tea till later. The afternoon would be very heavy, I could tell that. I kept my mind off the question of what exactly I'd be doing in the afternoon. I might be in an ambulance going to hospital, or I might be picking up my cards and going home to tell Mary I was sacked.

I mowed all morning. After about an hour, my back started aching with all the twisting back and forth. The cutter was always going too low or too high. Once it dug itself into the ground and began to drag, so that I had to slam the brakes on. It had earth and grass wedged in the cutting blades. Took me half an hour to clear it properly. Then off again, with the thing clacking behind me. What with the drumming of the tractor, the smell of hot oil covering up the smell of the hay, and the clack-clack of the blades, I began to think very kindly toward a quiet corner seat in the pub and a cool dark pint of beer. But I had to get a fair morning's work in first.

I did it all except the dangerous bit and then I drove the tractor down to the pub and parked it right outside. It was half a mile at least, and I wasn't going to waste time walking. I went in, got my pint, opened my box of sandwiches and was just settling down, passing the time of day with old Ken, the landlord, and one or two others, when I heard a noise I thought was familiar. I looked out of the window. Mr. Robert's car. He drove a Jag. Probably Yvonne wouldn't ride in anything else, but in (continued overleaf) any case, he was the smarty-pants Young Farmers' Club type who would have to have a fast car like he'd have to breathe.

I saw him looking at the tractor and then he took his wife into the saloon bar, very smart for summer visitors and very pricey. He stayed long enough to settle her with a drink and then he came in to the public bar, looking for me.

"There you are," he says, coming straight to the point. "Using the tractor for personal transport, I see."

"It's either that or take a much longer lunch break," I told him.

"Any reason why you shouldn't eat your lunch in the field?" he asked. Oh, he was out to get me, the red-faced pup.

"I'm in the habit of having a pint with my lunch, Mr. Cartwright," I said, very clearly. "I'm entitled to forty minutes, the union'll back me on that, and it's my own affair where I spend them."

"But the tractor's my affair," he said. "I pay for the fuel it costs for you to run the thing round like a taxi."

"Please go outside if you want a quarrel," said old Ken, getting ready to show us the door.

"Have you finished that field?" said Robert, ignoring Ken completely.

"All but the bit that's too steep," I said. I could feel myself beginning to shake, he was annoying me so much.

"Well, remember that's what the tractor's for," he said, giving me a really mean look. He turned to go back to the saloon bar, and at that moment I happened to look past Ken's head and right through the serving hatch into the saloon. You could see anyone who was standing there, though you couldn't see the rest of the room. And Yvonne had the upper half of herself well and truly framed in the hatch, looking across, taking it all in. Her eyes were very bright. I suppose she liked to see men quarrel. I hated her worse than him.

We got a bit of peace then, in the public bar, but it was all spoiled for me by knowing that the two of them were in the saloon. So I just finished up my sandwiches and had another half of beer, to wash them down, and went out to the tractor again. I hadn't told Ken or any of the others about what was on my mind. Sometimes a man's best alone. Their advice couldn't help me and I didn't want to spoil my lunch break talking about it.

I drove the tractor back to the field. The grass I'd cut during the morning was already drying. It was very good mowing weather. To my eye it already looked a different green from the part that was still uncut. There were a lot of flowers in it, mostly buttercups and clover. There were a few poppies, but not many, because it was good soil.

I got the tractor in position as if I was going on, but I still hadn't made up my mind. The engine was going, so I didn't hear the Jaguar drive up, but suddenly it was there on the road, at the bottom of the slope. I looked down at it and saw Robert and Yvonne get out. She stayed by the car and he came into the field and walked up toward me. I stopped the engine to hear what he had to say.

"You've made a pretty good job of this," he said, looking round at the field. "Finish this bit and you can knock off."

"If I do this bit I'll knock off for keeps, as like as not," I said. But I didn't press it too much. He must have wanted to smooth things out a bit, after the way he'd insulted me down at the pub. He'd cooled down and realized he'd gone too far. If he sacked me on the same day as he'd quarreled with me like that, in front of witnesses, it would be all over the district that he was a farmer who treated his hands badly.

He blinked up at me. "You can do what you think best," he said. "If you don't want to mow that slope, don't."

Then he turned round, before I could say anything, and went back down to the Jaguar and Yvonne.

That left me in the clear. All I had to do was turn the tractor round, take it back to the farm and call it a day. He wouldn't sack me. He'd given in to my judgment. He must have known damn well that he wouldn't drive a tractor along that slope himself, not for £50,000, and he knew how it would look if he made me do it, under threat of the sack, and then I got killed. That was how his mind was working. He didn't like me any better than before and he still wanted to get me out of eyeshot of his wife, I knew that.

I started the engine. And now comes the bit that's hard to explain. All of a sudden I didn't want to leave the field without mowing that slope. I was frightened, but now that Robert had backed down, it was a matter between me and my fear. He was out of it and so was his silly bitch of a wife. And now, for the first time, I really felt I couldn't turn my back on the job. Am I making it clear? I don't suppose so. It's just that--well, I was a tractor driver and the field was waiting. I felt that if I did it and got away with it, I'd feel better every time I climbed up on a tractor, for the rest of my working life.

So now I was trapped, and in the strongest trap of all: one of my own making. If the boss tells you to do something foolhardy or else he'll sack you, and you tell him to go to hell, that's all right--you've shown your independence. But if he tells you to do it if you feel able to, and leaves it up to your own judgment, what then? You can turn away from it and still live with yourself, right enough. But for the rest of your life you'll wonder what would have happened. Whether you were right to put your own safety first. Whether you would have made it after all.

So there was the slope, with its uncut grass, waiting.

For a moment I just sat there, looking at it. I kept the engine turning over, and the tractor was shaking under me as if it was already getting ready to buck me off and roll on me. I took my cap off and there was a rim of sweat where it lay against my forehead. Jesus, I was frightened.

I knew Robert's eyes were fixed on me and I knew what he must be thinking, but I hadn't any energy to spare for him now. Yvonne would be watching me, too, and thinking her own little thoughts, but the same applied. No time for that now. Although I knew they were close by, I felt as if they were millions of miles away, on another planet. There were no other people in the world: There was only me, and the tractor, and the tall green grass with the flowers in it. And the field, lying so still in the afternoon sunlight, with that horrible hump sticking out in it. Sort of bulging out, as if it wanted to mock me. Come on, it seemed to be saying, and I'll treat you like I treated Daniel.

The cutter was rattling behind me, in time to the shaking of the tractor. It seemed to be impatient to get going. I couldn't tell whether it was on my side or the tractor's.

Did I really have to do this? I put my cap back on and leaned for a second on the mudguard at the top of the nearside rear wheel. It was vibrating with that same metallic drum, drum, drum that ran all through the tractor and up through the seat into my spine. It seemed to me, at that moment, like the drumming of the soldiers of death coming for me.

I shifted right over on the seat and leaned my weight on the offside wheel, the one on my right. I'd decided already to tackle the slope in that direction, right side high and left side low. When I got to the end of each row--that is, if I did get to the end and didn't tip over right away on the first run--I wasn't going to turn round and come back. I was going to go down to the bottom of the field, where it was level, and come back to this side again. My reason was that to keep an eye on the cutter, I had to twist round to the left and look back. This meant I would naturally lean my weight to the right, up the slope. Not that it would make much difference. I'm not a very heavy man.

I looked again at the slope ahead of me. Well, I was ready to go. Suddenly I felt, in my belly, the terrible lurching feeling the tractor would make as it went over. As Daniel must have felt it. My inside churned round and round and my bones felt chalky, as if they'd snap (continued on page 195)The Sun Shines(continued from page 82) straight away. Daniel must have seen the world turn over and the green slope come rushing up at him. Then the sickening weight of the tractor rolling on him and the drum, drum, drum in his ears. Forty-five minutes before they could drag it off him. Where did they find a fool to try to work over that same stretch again? A fool like me?

But it was too late to turn back now, really too late. For £15 worth of hay, I was going to invite a big yellow tractor to roll on me. And not even my own £15. I let in the clutch, moved as far as I could over to the right, and we went forward.

Almost at once the right-hand wheel started shifting up and down, as if it had too little weight to hold it steady. I pressed down on the mudguard with my whole strength, and at the same time moved the lever to bring the cutter down to mowing level. Let's cut some grass before we go over, I thought. Then I swiveled my head to look where I was going. The small wheels in front were running softly through the long stalks. They were trying to turn to the left, of course, and run down the slope. Trying to save my life. I held them straight.

I was doing four things at once now. Holding firmly onto the steering wheel to keep the whole outfit on course. Working the lever that raised and lowered the cutter. Looking ahead and looking back, twisting my head and shoulders back and forth without stopping. And keeping the weight of my body clenched against that right-hand mudguard. Oh, yes, and there was one more thing I was doing, a fifth thing. I was giving out the cold sweat of fear through every pore in my skin. "Jesus," I heard my voice saying quietly, "Jesus. This is it. Jesus. This is it. Jesus. This is it." I wasn't swearing. I was praying.

I smelled the sweet grass. Behind me it would be bleeding as the blades cut it. But the scent of its green blood would be drowned in diesel smoke, like die scent of my fear. On we went. Here came the hump: I drove straight onto it at the steepest point. Suddenly, I couldn't bear the thought of working up to the worst point, sweating with fear all the time, and then getting it. If we were going over, I wanted to go over on the first run. The tractor shook heavily under me, I threw my weight hard to the right, stiffened my right arm on the steering wheel, and turned to look back at the cutter. It was working well, taking off the grass only an inch or two above ground level.

Up went the right-hand wheel. Jump off, something seemed to scream in my ear. But I couldn't. There was nowhere to jump to. I couldn't climb up over the huge bumping wheel on my right. So I just kept looking back at the cutter, and steering absolutely steady.

The whole right-hand side came up. It came up farther than I had allowed for even in my worst thoughts. It came up, it came up. And suddenly it went down and we were still driving straight on and still cutting hay. I opened up and went fast. We bounced along to the end of the row with the cutter jumping up and down, clacking away like mad and missing several patches of that £15 grass. I didn't care. I had come through, I had won, I was the king of the world. If I felt like a burst of speed, I could have one, because I was the king and could have anything.

I swung the tractor round and drove down to the bottom of the field. Not to parade myself in front of Robert and Yvonne, because I had truly forgotten that they were on this earth. Simply because that was the way to position the outfit to cut another row. I drove fast, singing, and the tractor rolled and bounced. The seat underneath me was jumping like a goat. Round with the wheel again and I was charging along beside the bottom hedge. And suddenly I was beside the parked Jaguar and Robert's face was staring, for an instant, right into mine. It looked sick. Sick with fear and sick with rage. I saw it all. He'd been as frightened as I was, watching me. But now that it was over, his spirits didn't lift up like mine. They sank right down, because I'd beat him all ends up.

There was nothing I could do to make him feel better. I couldn't get off the crest of my wave just then, not for anybody. I just kept my foot down and roared along to the end of the field, then up again to begin another row.

This time, it was easy. I kept my weight well over to the right, just in case, but my mind was careless. The worst part was done; we had it licked. I just held the tractor steady and this time the cutter was at just the right height. I could have won a mowing competition with that row.

Round again, singing "I'm the king, I'm the king," to no tune at all, and this time the Jaguar had gone. I fancied there was a scorched place on the road where it had been standing. I kept on with the mowing until the last blade of grass was cut. That was it. I'd have to come back, in a day or two, to turn it over, but that held no terrors now. I could stay on this farm for the rest of my life, if I wanted to, and work over that slope whenever it was needed. Plowing, mowing, harvesting, spraying, anything. Me and the tractor, we'd beaten it.

I drove back to the farm. There was no sign of the Jaguar. I got out a spanner and unfastened the cutter and cleaned it with an oily rag and put it away. The sun was still shining warmly, and it beat on my back and dried the sweat under my shirt, and there was plenty to dry.

I was just coming out of the shed after putting the cutter away when Yvonne came out of the house and stood looking at me.

"Finished for the day?" she asked me.

"I thought you'd gone out," I said.

"Bob had to go into Banbury," she said. "There's a man he's got to talk to about seeds or something."

"Oh," I said.

"He wanted me to go along. He was quite cross when I wouldn't. But I told him I had a headache. It's so close today." And she shook her head as if to clear it. Or to make the light quiver in her yellow hair. "I'm better now, though," she said.

"Well, I'm off," I said. But I still stood there.

"I should think you need a drink," she said. "What with everything."

"They're not open," I said.

"There's plenty in the house," she said. "Plenty of everything."

What could I do? Another time, I'd have gone straight back to Mary and the kids. But today I was the king. I'd won and it was a case of winner take all.

So she went into the house and I went in after her.