dripped off the trees into the grass and stained Rexyâs paws as he followed his master. Whenever there was a wind the liquid blew back like fine rain into Alfieâs face and burned it, peeled his nose and bleached his eyebrows, and made his eyes as red as a ferretâs. Both master and dog looked as if they had just come back from crossing the Sahara.
This tedious uncomfortable business of spraying was probably the biggest single operation in Alfieâs busy year. It took a long time, and it was also very expensive; so that less conscientious growers were apt to âgive it a missâ in seasons when their bank balances were in red or when they wanted to buy a new motor-car. There was a great temptation to do so; for if a sharp frost should come when the fruit was just forming, all the money and labour of spraying would have been spent in vain. The frost could slay more plums in a night than the little green caterpillars could devour in a season; and as the fruit-growers said when they looked for an excuse: âYou canât spray against Jack Frost.â
But Alfie, who was painstaking and persistent and whose integrity showed itself in everything he did, never made that excuse. He felt, I think, a sort of obligation to his trees. He must do his best for them; and if thereafter the frost took all, if there was not a plum left on the boughs nor a penny of profit from all the twelve acres, he would still have the curious consolation that his orchards looked âcleanâ, the abhorred caterpillars did not thrive in them, his neighbours need have no fear lest the pest should spread from Alfieâsland. He had the true countrymanâs dislike of a botched job, the craftsmanâs determination to leave nothing to chance. So every year, in January or February, Rexy went blond as a film star and Alfie with his peeling face looked very unlike a film star indeed, and the village knew that Alfie was spraying. Once again heâd decided to put off buying a motor-car.
This, I think, is how I shall always remember him: with a grin on his red, raw face and his eyebrows and eyelashes ginger-blond, and ginger-blond too the lock of hair which always pokes out from under his cap: with ginger-pawed Rexy sardonically grinning at his heels; walking among the trees which bear proud names like Blenheim and Victoria, looking up into the dripping boughs and then glancing at the inscrutable sky and shrugging his shoulders as an old gambler does while he watches the desperate race, his fancy lying third, and still a hundred yards to go.
The Blacksmith
Jeremy Briggs, who helped Mr Chorlton to make our pitch one of the best in the West Country, was another craftsman. At his blacksmithâs forge, when he was not shoeing horses, he would contrive you almost anything from a cigarette-lighter to a set of fire-irons or a pair of wrought-iron gates. On the cricket-field he lumbered about rather like one of those great slow farm-horses whose enormous hairy hoofs he cared for. Between matches he often mowed the ground for us, or patiently dragged the heavy roller to and fro, to and fro between the creases while Mr Chorlton with a pocket-knife dug up the daisies, and filled in the holes. These two, as they worked together, carried on an argument which never ended; for Briggs was a Socialist and Mr Chorlton, whosewide classical reading had persuaded him that the political troubles of Athens and Rome were much the same as ours, believed that mankind was incapable of improvement and that no doctrine could save it from damnation. The argument continued from week to week and was abandoned in September only to be resumed in the following April. When Briggsâ rolling took him down the pitch away from the crease where Mr Chorlton knelt before a daisy, Briggs began to shout; and Mr Chorlton shouted back, so that you could hear them in Magpie Lane, the one quoting Marx, the other Pericles. Our nearly-perfect cricket-pitch was
This tedious uncomfortable business of spraying was probably the biggest single operation in Alfieâs busy year. It took a long time, and it was also very expensive; so that less conscientious growers were apt to âgive it a missâ in seasons when their bank balances were in red or when they wanted to buy a new motor-car. There was a great temptation to do so; for if a sharp frost should come when the fruit was just forming, all the money and labour of spraying would have been spent in vain. The frost could slay more plums in a night than the little green caterpillars could devour in a season; and as the fruit-growers said when they looked for an excuse: âYou canât spray against Jack Frost.â
But Alfie, who was painstaking and persistent and whose integrity showed itself in everything he did, never made that excuse. He felt, I think, a sort of obligation to his trees. He must do his best for them; and if thereafter the frost took all, if there was not a plum left on the boughs nor a penny of profit from all the twelve acres, he would still have the curious consolation that his orchards looked âcleanâ, the abhorred caterpillars did not thrive in them, his neighbours need have no fear lest the pest should spread from Alfieâsland. He had the true countrymanâs dislike of a botched job, the craftsmanâs determination to leave nothing to chance. So every year, in January or February, Rexy went blond as a film star and Alfie with his peeling face looked very unlike a film star indeed, and the village knew that Alfie was spraying. Once again heâd decided to put off buying a motor-car.
This, I think, is how I shall always remember him: with a grin on his red, raw face and his eyebrows and eyelashes ginger-blond, and ginger-blond too the lock of hair which always pokes out from under his cap: with ginger-pawed Rexy sardonically grinning at his heels; walking among the trees which bear proud names like Blenheim and Victoria, looking up into the dripping boughs and then glancing at the inscrutable sky and shrugging his shoulders as an old gambler does while he watches the desperate race, his fancy lying third, and still a hundred yards to go.
The Blacksmith
Jeremy Briggs, who helped Mr Chorlton to make our pitch one of the best in the West Country, was another craftsman. At his blacksmithâs forge, when he was not shoeing horses, he would contrive you almost anything from a cigarette-lighter to a set of fire-irons or a pair of wrought-iron gates. On the cricket-field he lumbered about rather like one of those great slow farm-horses whose enormous hairy hoofs he cared for. Between matches he often mowed the ground for us, or patiently dragged the heavy roller to and fro, to and fro between the creases while Mr Chorlton with a pocket-knife dug up the daisies, and filled in the holes. These two, as they worked together, carried on an argument which never ended; for Briggs was a Socialist and Mr Chorlton, whosewide classical reading had persuaded him that the political troubles of Athens and Rome were much the same as ours, believed that mankind was incapable of improvement and that no doctrine could save it from damnation. The argument continued from week to week and was abandoned in September only to be resumed in the following April. When Briggsâ rolling took him down the pitch away from the crease where Mr Chorlton knelt before a daisy, Briggs began to shout; and Mr Chorlton shouted back, so that you could hear them in Magpie Lane, the one quoting Marx, the other Pericles. Our nearly-perfect cricket-pitch was
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