Blood Brothers

‘Nancy! Your mother!!’ Having taken a long, deep breath she laughed out loud. ‘Joe’s here! He arrived just now; Nancy said I was to come and get you.’

When Frank didn’t respond, Alice asked worriedly, ‘Aren’t you pleased? I though you wanted Joe for your best man. Wasn’t that why you tracked him down, so you could ask him?’

‘Well o’course!’ Reassuring her, Frank drew Alice to him. ‘There’s nobody more thrilled than me to have him home for the wedding.’ Though now he was actually here, Frank was not so sure.

Pushing Alice away he took note of her flushed face, and the manner in which her wet dress clung to every curve. He felt a surge of anger. ‘For God’s sake…look at you! You’re soaked to the skin!’ For some inexplicable reason he resented her excitement at Joe’s arrival.

Grabbing his coat from the tractor, he threw it roughly round her shoulders. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded. ‘What have I told you about going in the brook? Why didn’t you send Jimmy down to find me?’

‘I didn’t know where Jimmy was.’ Her spirit deflated by his surly attitude, Alice spoke quietly. ‘I haven’t seen him.’

Seeing how her smile had fallen away, Frank was quick to apologise. ‘Sorry, Alice…it’s just that I hoped to get this work finished, and now I’ve got trouble with the damned tractor.’

Alice shrugged. ‘It’s all right, I understand.’ All the same, she was surprised at his sudden mood change.

‘I sent Jimmy to the barn to see if he could start the old tractor and fetch it down,’ he explained. ‘Oh, I know the old banger’s about had its day, but if he can start it, we might just manage to get this job done.’ His voice hardened. ‘That was over an hour ago, and he’s still not back!’

He glanced about. ‘Where the hell is he? You know what? I’m beginning to think he’s not up to farm work. I swear if he doesn’t soon buck up his ideas, I’ll kick his lazy arse out of it! I gave him a warning a couple of days ago, when I found him asleep in the hedgerow, and now you say he can’t be found, eh? Well, this is the last straw!’

‘I didn’t say he can’t be found,’ Alice corrected him, ‘I said I hadn’t seen him.’

‘Same thing!’

Just then, from somewhere in the distance, they heard the sound of an engine spluttering and coughing. ‘Would you believe it!’ Frank stretched his neck to see. Pointing to the plume of dark smoke rising through the air, he laughed out loud. ‘Well, I’m damned! He managed to get her going!’

Alice wasn’t sure if the time was right to remind him, but she did anyway. ‘What about Joe? He’s come back like you asked him, and Nancy said for you to come home, because she’s making us all a bite to eat.’

‘I can’t leave now!’ He scowled. ‘Surely you can see that?’

‘So, what will I tell her?’

Frank grew impatient. ‘Tell her whatever you like.’ He started running towards the tractor. ‘Joe won’t mind,’ he shouted. ‘He’ll not be going anywhere.’

Throwing off his jacket, Alice ran after him, but having just dashed all the way there and with a wet skirt lapping round her legs, she could hardly keep up. ‘Can’t you get Jimmy to hold the fort for an hour?’ she called back.

Coming to a halt, Frank waited for her to catch up. ‘Get Jimmy to hold the fort…that idiot?’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Use your common sense! Just tell them I can’t come back right now. If we don’t get on, the tractor might stop and if that happens, we’re buggered!’

He gave her a dismissive kiss on the mouth, before running on up the hill. ‘Don’t push her too hard, you damned fool!’ she heard him yelling at Jimmy. ‘It’s been a while since she were started up!’

He waited for Jimmy to get alongside. ‘Took you long enough, didn’t it?’ Frank grumbled. ‘Get down from there!’

Jimmy climbed down. It was not a graceful thing to see, for Jimmy Slater was a man of slow habit. Thick-built, he was not the most intelligent man on earth, nor the prettiest.

With his hair receding from a high forehead, he had a long, thick pony-tail which hung partway down his back. His bottom lip was wet and drooping and his big lolloping eyes were unnerving if they caught you in their sights.

‘I never thought I’d get it started.’ Covered from head to toe in patches of grease and oil, Jimmy Slater looked a comical figure.

After saying hello to Jimmy, Alice took her leave. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what’s got into him,’ she muttered as she went. ‘I’ve never seen him in such a bad mood.’ But knowing how important it was to get the ploughing done, she put it out of her mind.

All the same, by the time she arrived at the farmhouse, Alice was unusually low in spirit. ‘He’s right about Jimmy though,’ she admitted as she came up the path. ‘He is a bit of a daydream at times. I don’t suppose you can blame Frank for not trusting him with the ploughing.’

She said the very same when Nancy asked where Frank was. ‘Frank will be along soon as he can.’ She relayed Frank’s message word for word.

Nancy was more concerned about Alice. ‘I don’t need to ask how you got soaked,’ she tutted. ‘Away upstairs and into some of my old dry clothes before you catch your death o’ cold!’

Alice apologised. ‘I got soaked because I went the quickest way, and I went the quickest way because I needed to find Frank,’ Alice explained.

‘You should never wade through the brook,’ Nancy warned. ‘There are sharp stones and bits of debris lying at the bottom. You could have hurt yourself.’

‘Leave the girl be!’ Tom chipped in. He thought there were times when Nancy could be a bit too sharp. ‘Alice is a grown woman, about to be wed for goodness’ sake. Don’t treat her like a naughty child.’

Having only Alice’s welfare at heart, Nancy was mortified. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Alice. Sometimes I let my tongue run away with me.’

Alice gave her a hug, ‘It’s really nice that you worry about me,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll go and get changed.’

Out the corner of her eye she could see Joe standing by the window, a cup of steaming tea in his hand and a mischievous look on his face. When their eyes met, he gave a reassuring smile.

Returning the smile, Alice made her way towards the stairs.

A short while later Alice returned, washed and dried; her hair tied back in a ribbon, and looking fresh in a pale cream-coloured dress with floral collar and wide belt. ‘Oh, Alice! You look pretty as a picture! I remember that dress from when I was young.’ Nancy ushered her to the table. ‘Now then, I’ve made you a cup of honey and hot milk. You’re to drink it straight down and no arguments, ‘cause it’ll keep the chills away!’

Outside, Tom and Joe were deep in conversation. Settling Alice at the table, Nancy drew Alice’s gaze to where the two men were sitting under the beech tree. ‘Tom’s eager to know what our Joe’s been up to, and Joe needs to know that we’re all right.’

A look of pride lit her homely features. ‘Joe’s been a fine son to us,’ she confided. ‘Oh, it’s not to say our Frank isn’t also a good lad, because of course he is. Only they have a different way of dealing with things.’

Curious, Alice asked her, ‘How do you mean?’

Nancy had a heart full of love for both her sons, but she was careful in her reply. ‘They’re different in nature, that’s all,’ she answered cagily.

‘In what way?’ Alice asked curiously.

Nancy thought about that. ‘Well now, let me see.’ She parked herself in the chair opposite Alice. ‘They’re both hard-working, and they’ve each got their good points,’ she emphasised. ‘But y’see, Joe is more a thinker than Frank; although I’m not altogether sure his dad would agree. What I mean is that our Joe will examine a problem from all angles before he makes a decision, while Frank is more impatient and impulsive. He’ll only see what he wants to see. He’ll often dive in at the deep end without weighing up the consequences first.’

She laughed. ‘He was the same as a boy…put the fear of God in me at times, he did!’

Almost oblivious to Alice’s presence, she began to reminisce. ‘I recall when Tom had his new fork lift delivered. Joe was only a toddler, while Frank was coming up to his sixth birthday. I was in the kitchen and I’d put young Joe outside in the wooden playpen…lovely thing it was. His dad made it for him.’

She hesitated, her face drawn up in a deep frown. ‘When I wasn’t looking, Frank carried his brother to the truck and tied him on to the forks. ‘Course little Joe thought it was all a game. When I saw what had happened, I ran out. By the time I got there, Frank was already in the driving seat, trying to start the engine.’ She gave a great heavy sigh. ‘It nearly gave me a heart attack!’

Having learned a little about the mechanics on a farm, Alice was horrified. ‘If Frank had started the engine and the forks had gone up, Joe could have been badly injured!’ She knew that much.

Nancy agreed, though she had never seen it as a deliberately cruel prank, more as Frank’s little game to amuse his baby brother.

She said so now. ‘Of course, Frank didn’t realise that Joe could have been injured,’ she said. ‘But his father was horrified. He gave Frank a bit of a spanking and put him to bed.’

Nancy chuckled. ‘He went wild, kicking and yelling, and wanting to come down. But his father said he was to stay there until he realised that what he had done was dangerous. Later on Frank apologised, and nothing like that ever happened again. Like I say…Frank’s a fine man but as a boy, he did have a bit of a temper.’ She could have said more. Instead, she turned her mind to other things.

Taking hold of Alice’s hand, she wrapped her two hands around it. ‘You’ll be so good for him, Alice,’ she said quietly. ‘You have a calming nature, and I’ve never known anyone to be so kind of heart. Oh! and you have such spirit, for a little thing!’