354
PARTISAN REVIEW
What fields there were-one after another they had been sold off to
neighboring farmers-grew fodder. Once a month, Mary and
Matthew-now Mary and Ben-walked into the village three miles off
to buy groceries, and liquor for Ted. They walked because their car was
rusting in a yard.
When money was needed for food, electricity, rates, Mary said to
Matthew, "Take that beast to market and get what you can for it." But
bills were ignored for months at a time, and often not paid at all.
This disgraceful place tended to be forgotten by everyone: the locals
were part ashamed because of it, and part sorry for the Grindlys.
It
was
known that "the boys"-but they were getting old now-were not far
off feeble-minded. They were illiterate, too. Mary had expected to
marry, but it had come to nothing.
It
was she who ran the farm. She told
her brothers what to do: mend that fence ...clean out that byre...take
the sheep for shearing...plant the vegetables. She was at them all day
and bitter because she had to be. Then it was Matthew who was doing
all the work: Ted was drinking himself to death quietly in his room. He
was no trouble, but he couldn't work. Matthew was getting arthritic,
and he had chest problems, and soon the hard work was beyond him
too. He fed the chickens and looked after the vegetables, but that was
about it.
Ben was given a room, with poor furniture in it-very different from
the pleasant rooms he had been brought up in. He could eat as much
as he wanted. He worked from daylight to dark, every day. He did
know that he did most of the work, but not that without him the farm
would collapse. This farm, or anything like it, would soon become
impossible, when the European Commission issued its diktats, and its
spy-eyes circled for ever overhead . The place was a scandal, and a
waste of good land. People came tramping along the lane and through
the farmyard, hoping to buy it-the telephone had been cut off, for
non-payment-and they would be met by Mary, an angry old woman,
who told them to go away, and slammed the door in their face.
When on the neighboring farms they were asked about the Grindlys,
people tended to equivocate, siding with them against officialdom and
the curious.
If
they lost the farm, what would happen to those poor
derelicts, Ted and Matthew? They would find themselves in a Home,
that's what. And Mary? No, let the poor things live out their time. And
they had that chap there who'd come from somewhere, no one knew
where, a kind of yeti he looked like, but he did the work well enough.
