Vic gave me my tools, bore off Elizabeth, and left me to it.
There I stood in the farmyard—I, the would-be farm-worker, to whom "work" had always meant sitting indoors and checking papers and clicking a typewriter!
Well, I must make a beginning.
I made the beginning that beginners do make—namely, I went at it like a bull at a gate.
With my hands that had not held any tool heavier than a fountain-pen, I grasped, I clutched the spade-handle, that felt so huge and so unwieldy. Violently I drove that spade into that brown and malodorous mass at my feet. Ugh! Violently I tried to raise the heavy spadeful of that horror. It was too heavy to lift. I struggled.
At the third or fourth effort I heaved the load up. Wildly I cast the foul burden into the wheelbarrow. I missed it by half, though; half that spadeful fell upon my boots and upon my immaculate gaiters. How revolting. I stamped myself free, shuddering.
Savagely I stooped to my loathsome task. I dug, heaved, threw. In ten minutes I was hot, dripping, exhausted. My arms shook and twitched with over-exertion.
And with a sudden more violent lunge than any of the others, I thrust my spade into the half-heaped barrow and left it.
I'd made up my mind. I wasn't going to stick this. I'd buy myself out. Going back to London offices and tightly-shut windows would be anyhow better than this.
I'd go! Yes! Now!