Charlie always enjoyed ordering in new strains of daffodils. Their very names conjured up exotic images. He walked the fields where the daffodils had remained unpicked so they could die back into their roots. After three years all daffodil fields had to be alternated or disease would get into the bulbs. He had spent the morning with Alan, ordering in from the catalogues, and now he wanted to inspect the fields that had lain fallow.
Two fields away towards the coast he could just see Jason ploughing, oblivious to all but his music playing full blast on his earphones. He’ll be deaf before he’s thirty, Charlie thought, watching the furrows the boy was ploughing critically.
The morning was unusually still, what his father used to call a ‘given day’. He paused, whistling to Shadow and Outside Dog to wait. Leaning on the gate he gazed into the shimmering horizon. From this gate he could look across his land in every direction. It was the highest point between the sea and the farm.
There was no sound except the birds and the distant tractor. He squinted upwards at a bird of prey above the hedge of the next field. It hovered, waiting to swoop, deadly as an arrow … there it went sure and true to its prey, too small for Charlie to see.
He thought suddenly of Josh. What a difference it would make if he could have gazed across this land knowing he was going to hand it over to his son. He still hoped, he could not help himself. Something deep inside him refused to believe he would be the last Ellis to farm this land. There was a remote chance that if Josh had a son … but Josh would not be able to turn his back forever, Charlie was convinced of that.
It was odd. When Josh was small, and all the time he was growing up, it had never occurred to Charlie that Josh would not want to farm. University, yes; Josh was a bright lad. Gap year, travelling a bit, that he could have understood; it was a rite of passage for the young. But the army! Charlie turned away from the gate abruptly and continued walking the edge of the daffodil field. The shock when Josh told him. He had laughed at first; had been about to say, Good one, Josh. Then he had seen Josh’s face, miserable and anxious.
‘Why the army, for God’s sake?’
‘Dad, it’s something I’ve been thinking of for a long time. It was just hard to tell you.’
‘The army is a bit different from being a cadet at school, Josh. I know you enjoyed all that, it’s a part of growing up.’
‘More than enjoyed, Dad, I loved it.’
‘So is this the result of the recruitment officer bending your ear?’
‘He didn’t have to. There are so many opportunities in the army … Dad, I want to fly. I want to fly helicopters.’
‘There are the same opportunities outside the army. You are deliberately going to waste a good degree.’
‘Rubbish, Dad, it’s because I’ve got a good degree that the chances of promotion are higher. Everything is computerized and highly technical now. It’s not Dad’s Army.’
‘I can’t see why you have to join up. If you don’t want to farm you could just as easily be a civilian pilot.’
‘I’m joining up because I like the whole ethos: the challenge, the fitness, the competition, the camaraderie, the whole life, Dad. Moving on, new postings; it’s what I want to do with my life. I’m sorry.’
Charlie had stared at him, then said bitterly, ‘Can you so easily turn your back on all this? The Ellises have farmed here for generations.’
Josh had stared back, unflinching. ‘I know. And each year it gets harder to make a living. It’s not a job, Dad, it’s a way of life. It’s like a yoke round your neck. I love this farm, it’s my home, but I don’t want it. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I knew you would take it badly.’
Josh had turned away, upset at Charlie’s white face.
‘How the hell do you expect me to take it?’ Charlie had bellowed. It felt like a precious gift had been thrown back in his face, somehow devaluing it. It was like being slapped by the most important person in your life. Charlie was reeling. He had gone off for the whole day, in turns furious with Josh and then deeply hurt.
Farming was all he knew and had ever wanted and he could not understand how Josh could give up this inheritance. He had thought the day Josh told him, and he thought it now, If only I had two sons, or even a daughter.
His deeply buried secret resentment surfaced. He blamed Gabby. It wasn’t much to ask, after all he had … Here he stopped, guiltily admitting unfairness, but if someone could get pregnant by mistake, surely they could get pregnant one more time. Surely one more pregnancy wasn’t too much to ask?
Secretly he also blamed Gabby for Josh’s choice of career. Nell and Gabby had mollycoddled him, encouraged him to travel, to enjoy things outside the farm; put ideas into his head.
Nell had said to Charlie, ‘It’s not personal, Charlie. Josh is not sticking two fingers up at our way of life, just choosing another life.’
‘How can I take it, but personally? How the hell do you expect me to feel?’
‘I mean that Josh choosing the army isn’t a slight. It’s not done to hurt you, although it must have done and that has made him thoroughly miserable. It was hard for him to come and tell you, Charlie, probably the hardest thing he has ever had to do.’
Charlie was not listening. He went to the pub that night and drank morosely until closing time, whereupon the publican drove him home.
The field still carried the strong scent of daffodils. He used to walk here with Ted as a small boy, and the smell could take him straight back to total recall of his father’s face and his old tweed jacket and cords, pipe in his mouth, flat cap on his head.
He made his way slowly to his Land Rover parked on the far side of the field. How could Gabby bear to be in London in summer? Odd she did not seem to mind the days spent inside working in a city. At home she could never bear to be inside for long, and the doors and windows would stay open from dawn to dusk.
He had never imagined she would have a real career, just dabble at her picture restoring. She was such a hermit and had from the day he married her hated being away from the farm for long. Then, suddenly, when Josh left she seemed to grow more confident of her skills or perhaps it was the figurehead that had been the start of the change.
Gabby had been going up and down to London three days a week now for three months, and she did not seem to be getting tired of it. With her work in Cornwall she was, for the first time, making real money. Charlie admitted this helped to compensate for the fact he had to make his own breakfast when she was away; fend for himself; do all those irritating little jobs he’d never had to do before; or Nell had done for him and seemed to think he could manage for himself now.
He opened the back of the Land Rover and the dogs leapt in. There had been a little write-up in the local papers about the figurehead.
‘You must be proud of Gabby. Isn’t she doing well?’ people said to him in the village.
‘Got to pull your own weight now, boy,’ the old boys joked in the pub. Gabby had been the only wife who took his lunch to the fields in the old days when they were first married. Lunch and tea at harvest. He smiled. Gabby had always been good like that.
These days she came back from London all excited and hyperactive. She rushed around trying to make up for her absences, cooked meals to save Nell the trouble and put them in the freezer. Ran about cleaning the house as if she could not stop still; and she was definitely losing weight. She and Nell talked endlessly about paintings. It seemed to Charlie that restoring was becoming a bit of an obsession.
People also said, ‘You must miss her?’ He did, but he missed the slow-moving, hesitant, dreamlike Gabby; that was the person he missed. He was used to that person. He was not sure about the new confident Gabby, it made him uneasy.
For the first time ever Gabby was not going to be home for the weekend. It was Elan’s preview on Friday evening and she was staying up in London to support him.
He stopped in the lane and looked at his calves. They were coming on beautifully. Charlie began to whistle contentedly. Darts match tonight and he was playing cricket on Sunday. It had been a good summer so far; he was even paying off the bank. Not a bad life. Not bad at all. He wouldn’t change it. One day when Josh was his age he would regret his decision. Charlie had no doubt of that.