پسر کشاورز

Chapter three

A Farmer’s Boy

Tony and his mother got on a bus in the middle of the town. At first they drove through streets of small, grey houses. Then the bus left the town and drove along a country road.

The bus stopped in every village. Tony saw green fields and small, quiet villages. Every house had a garden. The smell of the flowers came in through the open windows of the bus.

At last the bus stopped. Tony could see a river and an old bridge. A small road ran across the bridge, through the fields and over a hill. ‘Come on, Tony,’ said his mother. They got out of the bus and walked two kilometres in the hot sun. There were white and yellow flowers at the side of the road. Tony did not know their names. He wanted to know more about them. He wanted to know more about the trees too. There were no flowers or trees in his street.

He looked at the cows in the fields.

‘I’ve never seen a real cow,’ he said to himself. He watched them moving very slowly through the long, green grass. They looked big and quiet.

Tony and his mother arrived at the farmhouse and walked through the farmyard. Chickens were looking for food. A fat white cat sat on a wall and watched them with sleepy eyes.

Mr Wood came to the door and spoke to Tony’s mother. ‘Hullo, Betty. It’s nice to see you again. Thank you for your letter. How are you?’ They talked together like old friends.

Tony stood at the door. He felt lost and uncomfortable. But the farmer smiled at him.

‘Is this your son, Betty’ he asked.

‘Yes This is Anthony - but we call him Tony at home. He left school two weeks ago. He’s a good boy, and he’s very strong. Please give him a job, Mr Wood. We need the money. We’ve got six children, you know.’

The farmer looked at Tony. ‘How old are you, boy’ he asked.

‘Thirteen, sir.’

‘Do you like the country?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Tony.

‘Would you like to work for me, Tony’ asked Mr Wood. ‘Would you like to be a farm boy?’

Tony thought about the factory and the shops. The shops were bad, but the factory was worse. When people came out of the factory in the evening their faces looked white and ill. ‘Nothing can be worse than that,’ he thought. He looked into the farmer’s smiling red face. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Yes, please.’

His mother was right. Tony was a good, strong boy and he worked very hard for Mr Wood. The old farmer did not pay him much money. Tony ate his meals in the kitchen and he slept in a little room at the top of the farmhouse. But the farmer was kind to him and taught him a lot. Mr Wood had no sons. He had one daughter. Her name was Linda, and she was a year younger than Tony. Mr Wood loved Linda dearly, but he wanted a son very much. He was like a father to Tony.

Tony was happy. At the end of every day his back was tired and his legs hurt, but he slept like a baby. He ate Mrs Wood’s good country food. He drank a lot of milk. Soon he needed new clothes. He sent his old clothes home for his brothers. He sent his family money, too.

Sometimes Tony visited his family. He enjoyed those visits, but he was always happy to leave again. ‘I’m a country boy now,’ he thought.

In the school holidays Pip and his brother John came to the farm. Pip was seventeen and John was sixteen, but they were both still at school. Their father had a large shoe shop in the town. He wanted them to go to college and learn to be businessmen. But the boys spent all their holidays on Mr Wood’s farm.

‘I want to be a farmer,’ said Pip.

‘That’s right,’ said John. ‘Farming is the best job in the world!’

‘But you just come here in the summer’ said Tony. ‘It isn’t always summer, you know. The sun doesn’t always shine. Farmers work hard in the winter too. It’s a hard, dirty job.’

‘But you like it’ said John, and he was right. Tony liked his job very much.