The house front stretches along a sloping grass plot, the immense porch
built out like a wing with one ball-topped gable above it, a smaller
gable in the roof behind. On either side two rows of wide black windows,
heavy browed, with thick stone mullions.
Barker, Jerrold Fielding's agent, used to live there; but before the
spring of nineteen sixteen Barker had joined up, Wyck Manor had been
turned into a home for convalescent soldiers, and Anne was living with
Colin at the Manor Farm.
Half of her Ilford land had been taken by the government; and she had
let the rest together with the house and orchard. Instead of her own
estate she had the Manor to look after now. It had been impossible in
war-time to fill Barker's place, and Anne had become Jerrold's agent.
She had begun with a vague promise to give a look round now and then;
but when the spring came she found herself doing Barker's work, keeping
the farm accounts, ordering fertilizers, calculating so many
hundredweights of superphosphate of lime, or sulphate of ammonia, or
muriate of potash to the acre; riding about on Barker's horse, looking
after the ploughing; plodding through the furrows of the hill slopes to
see how the new drillers were working; going the round of the sheep-pens
to keep count of the sick ewes and lambs; carrying the motherless lambs
in her arms from the fold to the warm kitchen.
She went through February rain and snow, through March wind and sleet,
and through the mists of the low meadows; her feet were loaded with
earth from the ploughed fields; her nostrils filled with the cold, rich
smell of the wet earth; the rank, sharp smell of swedes, the dry,
pungent smell of straw and hay; the thick, oily, woolly smell of the
folds, the warm, half-sweet, half sour smell of the cattle sheds, of
champed fodder, of milky cow's breath; the smell of hot litter and dung.
At five and twenty she had reached the last clear decision of her
beauty. Dressed in riding coat and breeches, her body showed more
slender and more robust than ever. Rain, sun and wind were cosmetics to
her firm, smooth skin. Her eyes were bright dark, washed with the clean
air.
On her Essex farm and afterwards at the War she had learned how to
handle men. Sulky Curtis, who grumbled under Barker's rule, surrendered
to Anne without a scowl. When Anne came riding over the Seven Acre
field, lazy Ballinger pulled himself together and ploughed through the
two last furrows that he would have left for next day in Barker's time.
Even for Ballinger and Curtis she had smiles that atoned for her little
air of imperious command.
And Colin followed her about the farmyard and up the fields till he
tired and turned back. She would see him standing by the gate she had
passed through, looking after her with the mournful look he used to have
when he was a little boy and they left him behind.