‘I don’t know why you’re asking me, my phone’s only for texts and calls, how would I know? Ask Tom, he’ll get it.’ Moth was sitting up in bed, drinking a cup of tea I’d taken him when I realized he was still asleep at eleven thirty.
‘Hi, Tom, I can’t do this Twitter thing. It’s driving me mad. Help me …’
‘It’s easy, but only follow someone back if you want to, if they have things to say that you want to read.’
‘So who?’
‘I don’t know – anyone! Who have you got there?’
‘What about this man? I think he lives up the river and he seems to have read the book.’
‘Okay, why not, follow him.’
I followed him and hours later received a direct message: ‘I read your book and loved it, are you still in Cornwall? I have an old beef and sheep farm that makes cider. If you’re still in Cornwall I’d love to have a chat, can I call you?’
‘Mum, what are you thinking of; you don’t just give people your phone number.’
‘I know, I know I shouldn’t have, I feel such an idiot. But there was just something … I don’t know, do you think I should block the number?’
‘No, you’ve done it now. Just wait and see what he wants.’
We stood on the brow of a hill, on a patch of land that had been burnt rock-hard in a summer hotter than anyone could remember. The land fell away to the river, where boats drifted on the high tide and light reflected in a white ribbon through the trees on its banks. But up on the hillside there was no water, no green. The scorched earth spread along a broad ridge, grass grazed to soil height by cattle and sheep in every field. As the grass had dried up the confined animals had been driven to eat the hedges and scratch away at the soil beneath in an attempt to find shelter from the burning sun. What could have been lush green hedges, thick barriers between fields and highways for wildlife, were now no more than stark woody stems with sparse patches of shrivelled leaves, the roots exposed to the drying air. The earth in submission.
‘They’ve started feeding silage – winter fodder crops – in midsummer. But it’s not just here. Farmers can just about hold these high livestock levels in a normal damp summer, but when there’s just a slight shift in temperature this is what you get. It’s like this right across the south this year: overstocking – and the fields can’t take it. But I’m heartbroken to see it here.’ Sam gestured animatedly across the fields with his hand. A man whose hands appeared never to have seen dirt, or caught the fleece of a ewe thick with lanolin, or laid a hedge. The clean soft hands of an office worker. ‘It’s not as if I don’t understand the land. My parents are farmers, I grew up on a farm, across the border in Devon, but we don’t farm like this. This is just the use of the land for profit with no concern for its future. I work in the City, always have, so profit and loss is my business. But if you sell out your capital base you’ve got nothing left to build on and environmentally that’s what’s happening here. I can’t just sit by and watch it any more.’ He pushed his hand through his hair and adjusted his designer sunglasses.
I caught Moth’s eye. A silent expression of ‘What are we doing here?’ What were we doing there? It was hard to say, but I’d known Twitter would cause me a problem, and now here we were. Standing on an unfamiliar, tinder-dry hillside as a result of dabbling with phone apps that I didn’t understand.
The burnt hill curved up and away from the river to the broad ridge and on the opposite side fell into a quiet sloping valley, with a narrow single-track road running through. Sheep grazed every corner of the land. On the side of the road was a farmhouse that stood opposite a ramshackle zinc shed, held up with old telegraph poles and string.
‘This is my passion, this is why I bought the place.’ Sam gestured towards some scrubby trees that followed the contours of the valley. ‘Not just for the land itself, but for the orchard. It took thirty years of work in the City, thirty years of waiting to be able to buy this place.’ Almost imperceptibly the City boy began to slip and somewhere behind the façade was a flicker of something real. Something of the earth. Something I understood.
‘I think these trees are special, they’re so old and gnarled; supposedly there have been apples here for centuries. I think the history of the connection of man and cider-making here, with these trees, is extraordinary. That coupled with this amazing landscape of the hill going over to the river. Through all those years in the City this was always the dream: that one day I would be able to buy my own farm, to come back to the land and return to my roots. Now I have, and it’s here. There are days when the City’s too grey and I feel the need for the countryside like an itch I can’t scratch; on those days sometimes just knowing the farm is here is enough to get me through. But it’s not how I imagined it would be. There are so many problems here – and I can’t fix them.’
‘I don’t understand: if it’s your dream place why don’t you live here?’ I looked across the farm, at the dried grass shimmering in the heat haze. This man made no sense. I was back on the path, walking homelessly past empty summer cabins stretched along Hayle Beach. Huts locked up for the winter while their owners returned to another life elsewhere. If he needed a connection to the land so much, then why wasn’t he here? Nothing would have kept me away.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I desperately wanted to live here. My family were excited; we were making the preparations. But then, well, it was my wife.’
‘What do you mean? Did she change her mind?’
‘No. She was diagnosed with breast cancer. It changed everything. The treatment takes time, then the recovery even longer, and we couldn’t move while she was ill, so I continued to rent out the farm. And time passes, your focus moves elsewhere and your children grow up without you realizing. By the time Rachel was well, it was too late. The children are heading towards GCSEs; I can’t move them from their school, not now.’
‘So will you move here when the children finish school?’
‘No, not that soon. I don’t really know when, certainly not in the foreseeable future. Rachel and the children are too settled and happy. If I could just make things work here, then that would be enough for now.’
Beyond the broken barn, filled six feet high with years of animal dung and surrounded by metal storage containers, broken machinery and piles of every kind of plastic farm detritus, were more vast corrugated zinc barns filled with straw and animal waste. And between them, piled almost as high as the barn roofs, was manure. A huge stinking pile, running into pools of brown liquid that stood around the barns despite the heat evaporating every other drop of water from the farm. Tom had been right: I probably shouldn’t have given him my number. Why had he asked us here anyway? We couldn’t advise him about local contractors to clean up the mess.
‘The problems have become almost overwhelming. I’d got to the point where I was preparing to sell.’ His feet shuffled in the dust as he pushed his sunglasses closer to his face and looked down to the creek. ‘But just the thought of letting it go was almost unbearable. If I sell the farm, I let go of the dream of returning to the land and I just can’t do that. That’s why I loved The Salt Path so much. I read it and knew immediately that you were the ones, you would understand.’
There was a still quietness to the room, a silence of age and dust. A small room lined with books and bibles, a rack of foldable chairs and piles of boxes filled with unused advertising for events long past. Two women sat in the room, calmly chatting about someone they both knew, completely unmoved by what was happening in the huge space beyond the door. How could they act as if this was totally normal when I could hardly breathe? I stumbled to the door, knocking over the rack of chairs, my sweaty hand slipping on the brass door knob. I was out, air at last, but where could I go? The toilet opposite: my only escape route. I slammed the door shut and locked the cubicle door. Just breathe.
The stone church in the Devonshire seaside town was vast. If only I’d come in through the back door, then I wouldn’t have seen the endless rows of chairs seating over four hundred people and maybe I wouldn’t have locked myself in the toilet. I hadn’t been to the town for years. The last time I was here I’d been homeless, following the path as it leads up from the shingle beach and out of town. But the night before, as Moth and I had leant out of the window of a hotel provided by the festival and watched people walk along the path in the dying light, it had felt as if it was only days ago. I could still smell the red earth as it stained the sea, lighting the seafront in a rust-coloured glow. We’d been hungry then, tired, cold and desperate to find somewhere to camp as the night closed in, so we’d climbed the fence on to the golf course to the only flat spot around. The sixteenth hole. The next morning we had watched the sun rise, reflecting light from the red cliffs through a heavy sea mist, turning the air pink in an other-worldly glow as the greenkeeper and his dogs had stood accusingly on the course, keen to ensure we left before the golfers arrived. That morning felt more real to me now than the warm bed, hot water and free breakfast of this one. It was still close, present, urgent, the vibrations of the landslip we’d heard that night still rumbling. Oh no – what if the greenkeeper was here?
Five minutes to go. A hum of voices rose outside the door.
I unlocked the cubicle and leant over the sink, splashing water on my face, forgetting that I’d rashly applied rarely worn mascara. I pictured Moth sitting on the front row, waiting calmly for me to come out, and tried to breathe. Maybe the room wouldn’t be full? They’d probably put me in the wrong venue and only a few seats would be filled. My breathing slowed, but the mirror still reflected a pale, panic-stricken face, streaked with black. I tried to wash the mascara off but it wouldn’t move and I rummaged in my bag for something that would get rid of it. Lip salve. I covered my cheeks with the greasy Vaseline, like a rugby player preparing for the scrum. As I wiped it off my mobile signalled the arrival of a message. Sam. Again. ‘Have you had a chance to think about it?’
How could I think about it? To even consider what he’d said would require a leap of faith that we couldn’t make. It would require trust, which was something we might never be able to feel again. We would need to put the past behind us, walk away from the memory of where trust had led us before and hope this would be different. But we couldn’t do that: simply let go of the memory – the scars were too deep, too permanent. We could never forget. Yet Moth was sitting on the front row, tired, forgetful, slipping quietly into the shadows of his life. He needed air, and wind, wild skies and purpose. He needed to spend his days moving in green spaces. He needed the natural world to wrap him in the green cloak of belonging and help him back to the strength he’d found on the path.
Two minutes to go. The hum was growing into a loud echo around the cavernous roof space. That was it, there were just a few people but the noise was echoing.
Back in the vestry the women were on their feet, waiting.
‘Where have you been? It’s time to go on.’
‘I just needed to get some air. Are you ready? Shall we do this?’
The valley curved in a falling arc, the shape of an inverted teardrop, sloping downhill towards the creek. On one side of a newly planted section of orchard I could hear a stream, somewhere behind brambles, scrub and curled wire. Hear it but not see it. The sound of movement, the cycle of water. From land to sea and sky and back to the land. Full circle.
‘This is supposed to be one of the places that gave Kenneth Grahame the inspiration for Wind in the Willows. Look at this old book.’ Sam took a copy of Beyond the Wild Wood from his bag, a book about the author’s life. ‘I bought this from a charity shop years ago because I loved the picture – it’s the creek, and there in the background is the highest field on the farm. I couldn’t have imagined then that I would eventually own this place. Like I said, it’s a dream.’
It did have a picture of a very similar place on the cover. Behind his back I caught Moth raising his eyebrows. Who was this man, and why were we there with him?
‘But things haven’t gone as I hoped since I bought the farm. No one’s understood my vision for the place. Nothing’s worked. Then I read your book.’
What did he want? The hot, airless wind moved the leaves on the trees as a huge buzzard held the thermal above the valley, drifting, drifting, until he fell into a smooth glide and was gone over the hill top.
‘So say no if your life’s already on track for something else, or you just think I’m plain mad. But would you like to come and live here? Help return this special place to what it should be. Put the nature back into this battered landscape and the wildlife back in its hedgerows. Live here, make it your home. Manage my vision for the place: a biodiverse farm that still keeps a few sheep and makes cider, but puts the environment first. Can you help make it happen? What do you think?’
What did we think? We couldn’t think, but sat in the sunburnt grass. There was a silence in the air, no bird calls, or insects buzzing, not even the gentle rustle of the seed heads of grass moving in the wind. Just a hot, still, wild silence. The silence of an empty land where no wild thing lived. Below us lambs were penned under the apple trees, confined by metal hurdles into a corral of dry earth, the grass eaten away to stone and tree roots. Fleeces brown with dry soil, they scratched at the fence, hungry, waiting for food to come. The buzzard had circled the hill and appeared out of the sky behind us, weaving his way down the valley, his long plaintive call filling the silent empty landscape. What did we think?
‘Do you mean you want to rewild the farm?’
Rewilding can be a divisive term in farming circles. Most people take it to mean leaving nature to its own devices, opening the gates and allowing free roaming herbivores – domestic and wild. Many farmers see it as something pursued by conservationists and tree-huggers, a way of land use that leaves no room for enough food production to feed the country and hardly any profit for the farmer. But biodiversity can be returned in a way that balances the argument, by cutting the pesticides to only emergency use, not using nitrate fertilizers and reducing stocking levels, you can still produce food and allow biodiversity to return at the same time. It’s like rewilding-lite, the best of both worlds, but unfortunately without a catchy term like rewilding.
‘No, not to totally rewild it per se, more a case of keeping the rewilding gate open and nodding in that direction.’
‘Okay, so something more like restoration, restorative farming?’
‘That’s it, that’s it exactly.’
We didn’t know him, or anything about him. This could be the most amazing offer, or the wandering thoughts of a madman. He’d obviously read something about us online, he’d read the book, he could have any number of ulterior motives. No, we were safe at the back of the chapel, hidden, dark, quiet, safe. But the earth was warm beneath my hands, the short grass sharp, brittle and smelling like hay. The dark, musty, deep-sweet smell of the hay barn of my childhood. And for a moment I felt my feet catch against the baler twine and the wind begin to ripple my shirt. No. No. No. We’d learnt so much, lost so much; we would never allow ourselves to trust anyone again. How could we? I looked over at Moth, hunched, dizzy, forgetful. He needed a wild green life, but not stress, or complexity, or problems. Just the simplicity of a life in nature.
‘We’d have to think about it.’
‘Of course, but I just know you’re the right people for this place. I feel as if this was meant to be.’
The bright white lights were pointing straight at the stage, so dazzling I could barely see beyond the first two rows. But through the dimly lit sides of the church, behind the columns, I could see full seats all the way to the back. I tried not to look and kept my focus on the woman asking the questions. A strange jumping, pounding sensation in my chest distracted me and I stumbled over the answers. The other author was talking, but as I sat under the spotlights my mind ran in panicking circles. My phone was on silent, but still vibrating in my pocket. Him again. I knew it was him. Stop calling, I don’t know what I think, how can I possibly tell you what I think, especially when I’m in this alien place, dazzled by the interrogation lights. I suddenly realized why Bono always wears sunglasses and my thoughts disappeared down a rabbit hole of U2 songs, my mind running like a river to the sea.
‘Ray, would you like to read an extract from your book? Ray, Ray?’
Even Bono’s sunglasses didn’t stop my hands trembling on the pages, but as I started to read a strange calmness descended. Trust the words, trust the path, it’s got you this far. And as I read on, I wasn’t on the stage, but back on the beach as the tide rushed in, breaking over the sand shelf, racing towards the tent. Moth running through the soft sand in his underpants carrying the tent above his head, and there was laughter, and possibility. As I looked around the audience they were there too; they’d run up the beach with me. We’d all put the tent down at the foot of the cliffs together, and there was hope, and a future, and life still to be lived. I knew I wanted to say yes. Yes, Sam, absolutely yes. But that’s rash and foolish and learning nothing from hindsight. Hadn’t we learnt that nothing can ever be that simple, that no one’s to be trusted, that there’ll always be a problem waiting in the wings, waiting to catch you out when you’re off your guard?
‘Well, it’s been so nice listening to you both talk about your books, but I think it’s time to turn to our lovely large audience. Does anyone have any questions?’
As the lights dimmed the crowd came into view and I could see him, beyond Moth, standing by the column. The greenkeeper.
‘So, I’d like to talk to you about camping on the golf course …’