He’d used the time to write out a report in his notebook of the work that would have to be done at Hobday’s Farm, over Rogate way, where he’d been earlier that morning. One of the chimneys on the farmhouse had come down since his last visit, smashing the roof tiles beneath it and leaving a hole as big as your head which went straight down to the room below, where the floor had been damaged. The repairs would have to be done before the next rains came, which might be any day now – the spell of fine October weather they’d been enjoying for the past few days couldn’t last – and if the owners didn’t want a deteriorating property on their hands, they’d better do something about it quick.
Such, at any rate, was the news that Sam eventually gave to Mr Cuthbertson after he was shown into his office, a pleasant, airy room that looked out over the old Market Square onto St Ann’s Hill. Mr Cuthbertson had rubbed his chin.
‘Oh, they won’t be pleased to hear this.’ He’d caught Sam’s eye and they’d both chuckled. ‘They do so hate paying out money.’
The banks, he meant. The ones that owned so many pieces of property hereabouts now. The terrible slump in prices in 1929 had led to foreclosures left and right. Sam himself had been among the victims. He’d owned a small farm, part of what had once been a large estate just the other side of Easeborne, bought when he’d come back from the war. With the help of a loan from the bank, of course. Well, that had gone.
But he’d been luckier than most. It had been Mr Cuthbertson, of Tally and Cuthbertson, a firm of estate agents in Midhurst specializing in farming land, who’d been charged with handling the business and in spite of the painful circumstances, which had ended with Sam and his family having to move out bag and baggage, all their belongings piled onto a cart drawn up in the yard, and which by rights ought to have turned them into enemies, they’d somehow managed to hit it off and Sam had departed with Mr Cuthbertson’s offer of a job in his pocket.
What he was paid to do now was keep an eye on the farms in the district which the firm had on its books. Farms that were for sale, but attracting no buyers, not in present conditions. The Depression had bitten deep into the country and farmers had suffered along with everyone else. It was a matter of hanging on if you could and hoping for better times. Sam spent his days driving from one property to another, inspecting buildings for any damage and keeping an eye out for undesirable trespassers, gypsies in the main, and moving them along where necessary.
Mr Cuthbertson called him ‘our factor’ when he introduced him to clients. “This is our factor, Mr Watkin.’ It made Sam chuckle. He’d been a lot of things in his time: farmworker, stable lad, a boxer in a fairground booth for one whole summer; and a poacher on the side. He’d even been an officer, to his eternal wonder. Having somehow survived two years in the trenches, he’d still been alive and kicking when the powers-that-be began their policy of promoting from the ranks. Lo and behold, Sam Watkin had found himself a second lieutenant! A ‘temporary gentleman’, as the saying was then. The phrase still brought a smile of derision to his lips.
After the war he’d considered emigrating to Canada, or perhaps Australia, but Ada Witherspoon, daughter of the landlord at the Dog and Duck in Elsted, had said, ‘Well, you can go where you want, Sam Watkin, but don’t expect to find me waiting here when you get back.’ So they’d ended up buying a farm instead, and now he was a factor, and if you asked Sam what he thought about life he’d have said there was no sense to it that he could see, none at all. It was just one darned thing after another.
The business of the roof had been quickly settled. Mr Cuthbertson had told Sam to get hold of a workman if he needed one, but to see to the repairs himself. There was no point in calling in a firm of contractors. They’d only charge the earth.
There being little else for them to talk about that day, Sam had soon been on the move again, returning to his van, which was parked in the square below. He’d bought it second hand from the Post Office a few years back and painted it dark green, a colour he liked. It was perfect for rattling around in, and for hauling the tools and other odd bits and pieces he needed for his work.
Perfect for Sally, too, his old labrador, who went everywhere with him. The thump of her tail on the van’s floor had greeted him when he’d climbed in behind the wheel. Sal liked to lie in the back, curled up on her blanket, snoozing; waiting till it was time for a walk. Or, better still, a snack. Greediest dog alive, Sam always said.
‘We’ll run over to Coyne’s Farm now,’ he’d told her, as they set off. ‘Could be we’ll have a spot of lunch when we get there.’
But another delay had been in the offing.
Soon after he’d turned off the Petersfield road, in the direction of Elsted, he’d run into some roadworks. A gang of men was engaged in widening a stretch of the paved surface, a job that must have begun in the last few days, since they hadn’t been there the last time Sam had come this way. The crew were at their lunch break when he arrived, sitting in a line on the bank, leaving one of their number to direct traffic. The patch of road where they were working had been narrowed to the width of a single vehicle and this fellow was controlling the flow from both directions, using red and green flags to warn approaching traffic.
Sam had eyed him with some interest, and given the signal to proceed, had drawn up beside the shabby figure.
‘What, ho, Eddie!’ he’d exclaimed.
‘Crikey!’ A bristly face had peered in at him through the opened window. ‘Is that you, Sam?’
Eddie Noyes was the chap’s name and the last time Sam had seen him he’d been lying face up on a stretcher with the front of his tunic soaked with blood and his eyes wide with shock. At Wipers, it had been. Eddie had got his ticket home that day. He hadn’t returned to the battalion.
‘What are you doing over this way?’ The reason Sam had asked was because he knew Eddie came from another part of Sussex – from Hove, down on the coast, if he remembered right – but as soon as he spoke he’d wished he hadn’t. It was obvious, after all, what a bloke was doing when you caught him in workmen’s clothes with a two-day stubble on his chin waving flags on the edge of a public highway. He was taking any job he could find. Things were that hard still.
But Eddie hadn’t been ashamed to talk about it. (This was after Sam had pulled to the side of the road and sat down with him on the bank, one of Eddie’s mates having volunteered to direct the traffic.) He’d lost his position as a salesman for a paper-manufacturing company the previous year – the firm had gone bust – and hadn’t been able to find another. Just odd jobs from time to time, this stint with the road gang being one of them.
He was still living in Hove, he said, taking care of his old mum and his sister, who had lost her husband in the war. Money was short – Eddie had shrugged – but they managed. His only problem with this job he had now was he couldn’t get home at night – it was just too far – so he was having to bunk with some of the other men in the shed they’d put up to house their equipment. He had grinned then. ‘It takes me back, Sam, I can tell you. I’ve known shellholes more salubrious.’
Sam’s first impulse had been to put his hand in his pocket, but he’d checked himself. You couldn’t offer money to a chap who’d won the Military Medal. Who wasn’t more than an inch or two over five feet, but would stand up to anyone.
‘You must come and have a meal with us, Eddie. Just let me warn Ada first. She’ll want to put a spread on for you.’
He’d wished he could have offered him a bed, too, but for one thing they were living over at Halfway Bridge now, on the other side of Midhurst, which wouldn’t suit Eddie at all, and for another there simply wasn’t room in their cottage, what with the kids growing up and Ada having gone into the business of making frocks for friends and neighbours, turning what passed for their parlour into a sewing room filled with patterns and tailor’s dummies.