She was sat up against a wall, reading a book. I hadn’t caught on it was her at first, I’d thought it was a rambler, but when she stood up and paced about I knew the uniform and the shape of her. She was a mile away, toward the forest, and it might’ve been a magazine, I couldn’t rightly tell, but she was certain reading. She had a scran with her and all, because she ate something one point, and she stayed there, reading and eating, until early in the afternoon, then she made off to the house.
It wasn’t long after that, I learnt the proper meaning of the signpost down Norman’s. Father came in the kitchen and sat in his chair, and I knew straight off he was grum for he didn’t fix his look on anything and there was a quiet about him. He was mostly quiet, Father, but there were different sorts. This was a brown study, certain. Mum mashed a pot of tea and I sat at the table listening to the budgerigars chattering bollocks at each other in the next room. After a time, when Mum had set a mug aside us each, he said, I hear tell Norman’s putting t’ farm up.
Me and Mum just drank us tea in silence.
Sold the whole plot, he ’as.
I almost told him about the signpost, but I stopped myself when I looked at his face, all worn and sagged–he’d likely take it as I’d hammered the signpost in myself, if I told him that now.
Two hundred acre, he said, and took a drink from his Greengrass mug. I’d gave him that mug as a bairn, it was the one he always used, with a big face of Claude Greengrass off Heartbeat, a champion daft grin on him. It looked something queer now, when Father lifted the mug to his lips, seeing them two faces brought next each other–Greengrass grinning, Father grum as a miner’s arse. I didn’t understand what he was so bothered over. I thought he’d be glad to see the back of Norman.
What’s he done that for? said Mum.
Father glegged up at her, a look on him that told he’d never heard anything so stupid.
For t’ brass, he ’as. He’s sold up t’ same as built Amblebrook.
That capped it all, that, another Amblebrook, at Norman’s. I knew the place well enough–I’d passed it on the valley road, and from a certain spot on the Moors I could see it off in the distance, a development of houses further down the valley toward the coast. That was what they called it–a development–because it was developed up from nothing, just a scratch of ground next the river. Off-comed hole, I called it. Twenty or thirty red houses, all bright and glishy like a piece of flesh with the skin torn off. Probably that was what the town used to look like, way back, before it started to snarl up and scab over.
Norman’s would likely end up the copy of it, as there wasn’t anything local about Amblebrook. All pebbly drives and great squares of garden, front and back, never mind the Moors were wrapped all round. It looked like it’d been designed in a matchbox, with a looping road and tidgy figures of children playing football, and a fat babby angel pissing in a concrete fountain in the middle of the roundabout.
Father took another glug of tea. Old Greengrass wasn’t bothered about any of it, the bone-idle nazzart. Certain he’d have some scheme or other to trick these new Amblebrook city folk out of their brass. I imagined a pair of coppers chasing him down the matchbox street, shouting after him–Greengrass! You put that angel back, you hear. Greengrass shuffling along on his gammy leg, losing them in a shrubbery bush. Father had always been fond on old Greengrass, laughing at his calf-headed schemes–guided tours for towns of a haunted barn, two pound entry, only the barn was never haunted, course, it was just creaky with subsidence.
He sat now, churning his thoughts. Norman was a different type of nazzart all over. His family had been working that farm best part of a century at least, but he was happy to sell it fast as a rabbit’s fart, just for a quick pocket. Norman’s father never had much brass, no matter the land was gradely and he could keep dairy, for he was a doylem. And no doubt Norman wouldn’t manage all this brass he had coming, properly enough to pass it on to any son he might get, for Norman was a doylem too. Clogs to clogs in three generations. But that was his own problem. Amblebrooks all over the shop, that was ours. Seemed the whole county was teeming with folk out to steal a pound from the land.
Not far from us, further into the Moors, some smart tyke was tricking money out the ground–out the air, more like–at Goathland, because that was where they filmed Heartbeat. In summer it was teeming with the pink and green hats, come for a sight of Greengrass. They came in by the coachload. Never mind Greengrass wasn’t there and neither was the southern copper, and there wasn’t a thing to see except for a couple of bare fields and a van selling bacon butties. A coachload of tourists gawping at a field–likely old Greengrass himself had scammed that one up.
Mum came over and sat herself in a chair near Father.
Won’t trouble us, not up here, she said.
Aye.
It’s three mile off, is Norm’s, and our land don’t border. Won’t trouble us. Most we’ll see is a few more ramblers. Might bring some more brass int’ area, an’ all.
For who, t’ brass?
For t’ area.
For us, eh? Think we’ll see t’ brass usselves? He was looking at Mum now. No. More brass they bring in, the more of them’ll come.
He stared into the fire. Both his big scabby hands were clasped round the mug as he took the last of his tea.
Place ’as gone to rot, he said, quiet.
There were other changes too, course. Further down from Norman’s, they were fettling up a drinking hole for the new Amblebrooks, as work had started already on the Fat Betty. There was a mighty, yellow skip in the car park, slowly filling with manky articles of furniture–pictures and trunklements off the walls, chairs, tables, bar buffits reeking with fifty years of smoke, spilt ale and stale farts. And I had to laugh, what they were calling it. Betty’s Sister. You could imagine all them brewery authorities sat round their office in York, thinking that one up. That’d make up for the town’s favourite pub being dumped in a skip, they reckoned. Champion–fat old Betty would be proper chuffed her more viewsome young sister had took her place, certain.
I stared into the fire with Father, picturing builders working all round the hillside below us, clouds of dust and lugger-buggers losing their tea about the place, and slow, steady, the dust creeping uphill choking everything until all that was left was our farmstead peeping out the top, with me sat on the rock, watching.