Chapter 13: Thirteen

“It’s not easy recruiting drivers in agriculture is it,” I commented to my son Simon and son-in-law Matt, over the lunch I’d called the next day. As they knew perfectly well of course.

“Hardest part of the business,” agreed Matt.

“And keeping them,” Simon nodded. “The good ones.”

“Are you looking?” I smiled.

“Dad...” Simon grinned. Calling my jokingly obvious gambit.

“It’s a lonely job, in the cab,” I continued regardless, “rather boring, but they need great concentration. And to be the kind of person who cares about doing a good job.”

“Who is it?”

“Someone who’ll be good, I think. Twenty-nine, no experience but learns well, very sincere. Been in a bit of a bad situation. But getting out of it, could do with a start...”

“Okay he can come,” Matt exchanged an agreeable nod with Simon, “have a trial and we’ll see. George can see how he picks it up.” George is the senior driver, who’s been doing it for decades.

“Tomorrow at two?”

“It’ll be a tractor and four wheel turntable trailer, I expect,” I told a nervous-looking Rosie, later on. “That trailer has a steering front axle, to make it more of a test. It’s a lot more difficult than a twin axle, when you have to reverse it. You’re steering the tractor front axle, which is steering its rear axle, which is steering the trailer front axle which is what’s steering the trailer rear axle. And it’s the trailer rear axle which is going first.”

“God, hahaha,” Nancy laughed,”that’s a total setup.”

“They’ll expect you to get it wrong and need teaching,” I explained, “and it’s how you take that: if you listen, do as George the instructor says, how quickly you pick it up, and your attitude. They won’t be expecting you to just do it.”

“Suppose they won’t even give her a chance?” Thea scowled.

“I’ll try and persuade them,” I promised. My family, I was happy to reflect, is not one with a history of rebellion. Sons and daughters tend to do what’s expected of them; or of us I should say. So my daughter Maureen oversees the admin and booking, while the men do the machinery; but by the same token, dads more often than not hold sway. We are probably, it had to be admitted, all a bit spoiled, after four generations in the business - a business that depends on relationships as much as any cut and thrust wheeling and dealing.

“We’ll all come,” said Nancy.

“They won’t take it seriously if a gang of girls turns up with me,” I smiled at the thought. “They’ll think I’ve lost my mind and need to go into care. I’ll introduce you as my cleaner,” I looked at Rosie, “who’s interested and looking to develop. So they won’t be expecting too much. They’ll take you on as a trainee, as a favour to me, with any luck. So try not to crash, and you’ll be fine.”

Rosie nodded agreeably, and the girls settled for helping her - with YouTube, pencils, biros and phones lined up on the table, modelling the tricky reversing.

Then the next afternoon there I was, driving into the yard with Rosie. I had a bit of a smile on my face, with how Simon and Matt were going to adjust. Rosie had been dressed by her errant daughter and friends, after a morning’s shopping, and even made up, so she was looking rather sensational.

She was in boot style trainers, skin-tight stretch jeans, a short strappy top and open jean jacket. So one’s attention flitted from her slim legs with the alluring thigh gap, up to her taut ass, over her exposed, concave abdomen, past her small teen-alike tits to her big-blue-eyed face with its small nose, cheekbones, eyebrows, eyelashes and the rest of the mysterious recipe for beauty. Now with eye shadow, mascara, outlines and lipstick, all professionally done in town, she looked more like a model than anybody’s cleaner, and even a bit more confident than hitherto.

So as she slid fluidly out of the car and stood up, she was nominally dressed for work, but looking quite unlike a tractor driver.

I’m always on time, so Matt and Simon were waiting in the yard and came over, looking behind for another vehicle but politely ready to be introduced to the unexpected apparition.

“This is Rosemary,” I started.

“Hello, I’m Simon, the son,” Simon shook her hand with a broad smile.

“Matt, hello,” my son-in-law repeated the welcome. I could see they were pleased I was with someone, after my seven months in solitary mourning, and trying not to be too fazed that she was younger than themselves.

“Hello,” she smiled, deferentially, albeit looking them in the eye as Thea had been telling her to. Even that one word had enough accent to convey her different background though, so I hurried on:

“Rosie’s been doing cleaning up to now,” I told them in a fatherly tone, “but now she’s freed up to develop a bit more, and driving machines is something she’s interested in.”

Simon and Matt have excellent manners, so they never stopped smiling, even while they were clearly wondering what the devil I was up to, and how I had become so besotted with this pretty young thing that I thought I should waste everyone’s time letting her play around on our expensive equipment. But, they were being understanding.

“Well let’s go and meet George,” Simon led the way over to the end office by the big shed, “and see how you take to it. Actually, he can take the JD and trailer over into the field, and start there.”

“Plenty of space,” agreed Matt.

George nodded his greeting without saying anything beyond “Arternoon”, which is his way. Small, wiry and weather-beaten, social skills are not his forte - he’s a farm driver who’s happy to work on his own. Rosie, lacking much of a prompt, smiled but didn’t say anything.

George got the big John Deere out, drove it over to the trailer, connected it and drove across the road into the field, which was between crops. He paid no attention to the copse in the corner, to my relief. Rosie followed on foot and I watched with Simon and Matt from the yard as she was finally allowed up into the cab.

“Cleaner!” grinned Simon with irony, as we watched her slim figure climb up and in with an easy elegance that was not at all agricultural.

“I hope George is going to be fair with her,” I replied.

“Has she driven tractors?” asked Matt.

“No, she’s starting from scratch,” I said. “But I think she can do more than cleaning, let’s see. She’s not very confident...”

“Well some cleaning wouldn’t hurt, round the offices,” Matt offered, “if it doesn’t work out.”

In a minute George was getting down from the cab, already. He’d gone through the basics once and left her to it. A modern tractor can be a complicated thing, depending what you’re doing with it, but just towing ... even so...

“Hmmm,” I commented.

“Perhaps I should have done it,” Simon conceded.

“Probably means she was picking it up a bit too well,” smiled Matt, as the tractor set off.

Rosie drove off forwards, following an old furrow; accelerated, slowed, turned in a wide circle and stopped back next to George again, who signalled her to open the door, which she managed after a few seconds.

George said something, waving his arms back towards us, and stepped away. Rosie looked behind, then forwards and down into the cab. Nothing happened for a minute. The tractor moved backwards and she looked again, and started to reverse. It went alright for a few yards, then the trailer began to veer to the right.

Rosie steered the wrong way and in a moment the trailer was at a big angle to the tractor. She stopped before it did any damage, went forward and tried again. She hadn’t gone quite far enough, so the trailer was still at a slight angle. She steered the other way, but for a fraction too long, so the trailer ended up at an angle again, on the other side.

She went forwards again, backwards again, forwards again, and backwards again. She could keep it straight for a few yards, then it was getting away from her, as she was a fraction late with each correction then overcompensating. She was getting better, but not quite finding the right timing.

After a few more attempts, ending in making thirty or forty yards before it went wrong, George called a halt to it and, rather than do any advising, had her get out and drove the tractor and trailer back himself. Rosie trudged back after him and stopped forlornly by the car.

I knew, and I knew Simon and Matt knew, that George was not going to accept her, then. He’d seen that Rosie had basically been doing the right things and only needed a bit more practice to be able to do it. The issue was that he didn’t need his decades of experience being devalued by a slip of a girl picking it up just like that - even this entry-level tractor trailer driving. Or probably, a woman of any shape over any period of time.

But the business has a lot of different machines, they can be complex, George can drive them all, reliably, and Georges don’t grow on trees. He’s only 54, a long way from retiring. Matt and Simon couldn’t risk alienating him by imposing a decision. And no doubt they’d have been seeing that Rosie would be intimidated without his support, and probably wouldn’t be able to perform anyway. In fact, that could well have been happening already.

“We’ll have a talk and see,” Simon told me, as I made to leave to spare them the awkwardness of announcing a rejection. He and Matt waved to Rosie and I got in and drove us homewards.

“Sorry,” she said. “I can clean, if you like.”

“You just needed a bit of practice,” I told her. “George didn’t want you doing it, that’s all. We’ll find something else for you.” I found I didn’t want her cleaning the offices.

Back at home, the girls weren’t taking it well, as I relayed the ‘test’ and its outcome.

“So this George,” spat Thea, “he’s a worker but he gets to decide? I thought it was your company!”

“It’s a team of people,” I tried to explain. “You can’t be dictatorial or they won’t stay, you have to keep everybody onside, pulling together. It’s a very traditional industry where men expect to be the ones doing this kind of thing. So it was worth a try, but just too difficult I’m afraid. And nothing about you Rosie: if you’d somehow got it right instantly that would have just upset George more.”

“I thought the idea of running your own business is so you can have things the way you want,” Nancy joined in.

“I can do the cleaning, and other stuff - cooking, and gardening...” Rosie tried to pacify them.

“We should start our own business,” Sarah wasn’t being pacified, “driving, but better. I bet we could build it up, if we had one old machine to start with.”

“‘Girlz’ Contracting’, haha,” laughed Kayleigh.

“Haha,” Nancy thought the crude double entendre would get interest too. “And us in miniskirt uniforms. But seriously you can get a really cool booking form on Wix, ready to go, we did it in IT. Then we can have real time tracking...”

“So ours’d be the easiest machines to book,” Thea agreed. “They could see what slots are available and just book them.”

“And video on the website, about how well we do it,” Sarah nodded. “And even follow the machines on gps, on the site. Short periods, they could book, and watch the machines on the way, like Amazon.”