A Move to the Country

Casey Green paced his living room and said, ‘I can’t go on like this.’ He was six foot three and lanky with it, and his knees were somehow loosely hinged, and his living room was fourteen feet in one direction and ten in another, so his pacing seemed rather like that of a man in a prison cell, for all he was so comfortably at home.

‘Can’t go on like what, my dear?’ asked Miranda Green, his wife. Miranda was five foot four and slightly built, and she could have paced quite comfortably, but didn’t bother to. She perched on her stool at their breakfast bar, elegant – though scarcely long – legs crossed neatly at the ankles. It was 1974. Mini skirts were still half in and half out: Miranda kept hers two inches above the knee. She had good knees.

‘Living in the city,’ replied Casey Green, and the six adult yellow budgerigars in the big cage on the inner wall chorused their approval and the eight baby chicks tweeted to keep them company. It isn’t everyone who can persuade budgies to be fertile, but Casey managed. Miranda didn’t care for the somehow fusty smell that so many birds in a room create, but she liked Casey to be happy.

‘Casey’s my pet,’ she’d say to friends. ‘Casey’s all the pet I need,’ and so he seemed to be. Spiritually she combed and groomed him, and spiritually he preened. Casey and Miranda. They didn’t have cats or dogs for fear of making the budgies nervous, though Hattie, their daughter, had recently come home from Hampstead Fair with a goldfish which they’d had to house. Goldfish are not happy in bowls, going round and round gazing at nothing: life in a prison: eternal boredom. Goldfish have to have tanks and water weeds and company: they need events, like anyone else: like all living creatures. Even an earthworm enjoys a challenge: an especially crusty piece of soil to penetrate: you can tell by the squirm of its tail. So Casey said. The goldfish had so far cost £43 to keep happy, and that was back in ’74.

‘I can’t go on like this,’ said Casey Green in May of’ ’74. ‘I can’t go on living in the city.’

‘Where else is there to live?’ asked Miranda Green, in astonishment. It was 5 May to be precise. OPEC was getting its act together.

‘In the country,’ said her husband.

‘Oh, Casey,’ said Miranda, before she could stop herself. ‘What a terrible idea!’ Then she went off to her job as editor of a women’s magazine. She wasn’t very good at the job: rumour had it it was only hers because she’d had an affair with Astro Aster, the publishing tycoon. A totally unfair and untrue rumour, of course: but monogamy in those days was rare and a little unfashionable. All the same, the circulation of Miranda’s magazine was dropping.

And Casey went off to his job as head of a design firm whose ideas were in worldwide demand, and got his secretary Wendy Dove to find him lists of country properties for sale. ‘The country!’ said Wendy Dove, who was five foot nine and what you might call strongly built, and wore trousers all through the era of mini skirts. ‘What a lovely idea! If only I could afford not to live in the city! But what makes the country so nice is that there are no people in it, and the reason there are no people in it is because there are no jobs.’

Wendy was a clever girl, and Casey had once suggested to Miranda that she at least try Wendy out as a feature writer, but Miranda just laughed and said that was not the way things worked. Perhaps if Miranda had seen how they could or might work, the magazine’s circulation would have risen, not fallen. Or perhaps it was merely that Miranda would not, would not have an astrology feature in her magazine at a time when all the others were going over to them – for everyone, it seems, likes to know what’s going to happen next. (All Miranda kept saying, in her pretty clear voice, was this: ‘Load of old nonsense. Won’t have stars in my magazine.’)

What happened next was that all of a sudden capitalism seemed at the end of its tether. OPEC put up oil prices: the price of petrol rose to 50p a gallon (no one could see how, if energy wasn’t going to be cheap and freely available any more, cities could possibly continue), inflation went up another seven per cent, and on the day (11 June) that Miranda went to Harrods and found there were only two shades of tights available (light and dark) as if it were World War II again, it snowed. It was apparent that even the seasons were out of joint – a clear sign of impending catastrophe. That lunch time she went to a drinks party and was assured by a senior civil servant that ration books for food and necessities had already been printed and would be circulated by July, and in the afternoon she went to see Astro Aster, her boss, and was told it might be better if she went back to feature-writing and let someone else try their hand at being editor. ‘Someone else’ Miranda Casey imagined would be Teresa ‘Tinkerbell’ Wright, who had lately been seen at the Mirabelle with Astro Aster, but never mind all that: Tinkerbell was a good journalist and turned out to be a fine editor, and the magazine went from strength to strength, presently with two full pages in every issue devoted to astrology, and at least one or two surveys on the sexual habits and ambitions of its readers – always a circulation booster. No slouch, Tinkerbell!

‘I think the end of the world is coming,’ said Miranda to Casey that night. They drank champagne to cheer themselves up.

‘The end of the city,’ said Casey. Three budgerigars had been found with their feet turned up at the bottom of the cage. It had been a hot, hot June day and Hattie who was in the middle of her O-levels – once they were in July; in 1974 they were in June: if these days they are in May, why that’s all the more time marking (which is paid) and all the less time studying (which is unpaid), so that can only be an improvement – had opened the windows and Casey was convinced the poor creatures had died of lead poisoning. Though some might say it was a nasty opposition of maleficent planets that caused this misfortune on this day along with so many others: not lead at all. Or perhaps Miranda was being punished for her lack of astrological faith. But how will we ever know?

Hattie came in from her History exam pale and crying and said she thought she’d failed every single O-level and she wasn’t bright enough to get to University and all she’d ever wanted to do was work with horses, and why were her parents so horrible to her, and instead of saying, ‘It’s your hormones, dear,’ Miranda said, ‘We’d better move to the country.’

And so they did. Casey produced his estate agents’ lists with a flourish. He thought they should go south-west – to Wiltshire, say, (horse country) or Somerset (goat country) – not too near London yet not impossibly far.

‘Goat country?’ asked Miranda, and Casey explained that Somerset was the kind of place where people bred goats to provide non-allergenic milk for babies. (The world was not yet additive- or colorant-conscious, but there were faint early ecological and nutritional stirrings down in Somerset, and Casey was conscious of them.)

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a goat close to,’ said Miranda cautiously, and Hattie said, ‘Well, I have and they’re horrid; let’s go to Wiltshire. Horses are groovy, goats aren’t.’ (The word ‘groovy’ was still just about passable, at the time. Just about. But Hattie never got things quite right.)

They found a house in Somerset, down on the levels, on the flat green peat plains; a property contained by the squared-off runnels of a network of dykes, edged with stocky, much-lopped willow trees. Five acres of it. They were in it within the year. They sold their London house for £40,000. (It is now worth £650,000. But it’s no use thinking ‘if only’ in property matters. Though Casey was to, many times, like so many of us.)

‘You’d have to have inner resources to live here,’ said Miranda, nervously, the first time she saw the house. It was a square stone house with creepers growing over it, and a kind of flat blank look. Hattie shuffled amongst spring nettles in bare legs and shrieked, thinking a thousand insects were biting her, but she didn’t move out of them. She’d never encountered such plants before. (She was a city child, and way back then school trips had scarcely been invented, so what was she to know about the country?)

‘You have got inner resources, Miranda,’ said Casey, firmly, and perhaps it was some kind of blessing, or else a command (after all, Miranda had promised to ‘obey’ Casey when she married him back in nineteen fifty-something, that being the habit of the times), because lo and behold all of a sudden Miranda did have inner resources. She put on her wellies and rubber gloves and unlocked the nettles from the soil, and remade the garden of Highwater House single-handed. She DIYed, and plastered and repaired one outhouse to make a design studio for Casey, and turned the old cider house into a study for herself. They meant to work and earn from Highwater House – he drawing, she writing. Casey would go up to his offices once a week: she would turn freelance, write articles about country life, visit editors and colleagues once a month. There was a post office, wasn’t there, not so far away, and a telephone, and friends would visit: no need to be out of touch, not these days. How modern they felt – those days. (Though in retrospect, long, long before the days of the fax and the answerphone and the bleeper and the cordless telephone and the high-speed train, it’s hard to see how they could seem so. Perhaps the sheer amazement of reaching the moon back in 1969 – having rock-hard evidence that the skies were not magic but all too comprehensible – had not worn off.)

Wendy smiled and waited. She’d been brought up in the country. On Casey’s days in town she made sure the office tea came in porcelain cups with saucers; she threw out the rough-hewn rural pottery mugs which were thick and rough on the tongue but all the rage. She said if ever he wanted to stay over he could: she had a spare room. Casey said no thank you.

Casey had an aviary built for the budgerigars at the bottom of the garden: it was architect-designed. (The locals looked on with amazement.) During the long hot summer the birds died of heatstroke under the design-conscious glass roof. All but two, that is; a breeding pair fortunately; but something – badger, weasel, fox, who was to say – presently clambered in through the sluice tunnel and got those. Casey quite went off the idea of budgerigars. It was all too discouraging.

Hattie was right about her O-levels, at least. She failed the lot. Casey wanted her to go back to London and stay with aunts and go to a crammer’s but Hattie wouldn’t.

‘You moved me here against my will,’ she said. ‘Now put up with the consequences.’

She took a job as an apiary assistant, tending bees for Peatalone Honey in hat, veil and long white handling gloves and gown. She looked bulky. She was never slim: heaven knew where she got it from – Casey thin to the point of angularity; Miranda with her hand-span waist –

Except within a short time Miranda’s waist grew muscular and thicker. The calves of her legs grew broad and tough. Her chin was more determined: her eyes more shrewd. The third pair of rubber gloves (how quickly the brambles punctured them) were the last she ever wore. She lost interest in feature-writing, or perhaps it lost interest in her.

For the move to the country is not good, career-wise (the ‘wises’ came in that decade, and have never gone away, more’s the pity), for journalist, musician or actor – anyone who works freelance and wants to be employed. You need to be in the heart of things – that is to say, not requiring the expense of a long-distance phone call to find you, nor likely to charge expenses for the journey up for an interview or briefing. If it’s you or someone else a taxi-ride away, the someone else gets the job. But Miranda didn’t mind. Miranda had her animals. Animals admire you, love you, need you, watch you: animals don’t promote you and then demote you: animals don’t prefer Tinkerbell Wright to you or judge you by the length of your skirt: they obey you, you don’t obey them. The only thing is, animals multiply – then what do you do? Eat them?

‘Eat them!’ said Casey, of the twenty-four black-faced Jacob sheep. ‘To the slaughterhouse with them, eat them!’ They’d bought four in to keep the grass down. One ram, three ewes. That, in a season (for they were fecund and healthy sheep), made three rams, seven ewes. Two seasons on and the incestuous flock was up to twenty-four, and the young rams were killing each other, butting and horning to death, and there wasn’t enough grazing land available.

‘Eat them!’ Hattie said. She was courting a fellow beekeeper, an eighteen-year-old lad with no small talk and red knuckly hands. (‘She’s not going to marry him or anything?’ worried Casey. ‘Of course not,’ Miranda assured him. ‘She’s not as silly as that.’)

No one wants to buy young rams; you can’t even give them away. They got as far as the freezer and there they stayed. ‘Let’s not keep sheep any more,’ said Casey. But Miranda didn’t listen. She loved sheep. She bought a bigger freezer and gave joints away to the friends from London – though, unfortunately, they came visiting less and less often. They turned out to have been more colleagues than friends.

Then there were the dogs. You have to get a puppy if you live in the country. Of course the puppy grows up into a bitch and it seems unkind not to let nature take its course and before long you have nine more puppies and you can’t find homes for all of them because the father’s unknown (a puppy’s father doesn’t have to have a pedigree but it does seem to need an address) so you keep two –

And cats. Everyone loves cats. And hens. Chickens are adorable. Ducks are really witty. Geese are silly but brave. And all multiply.

‘Why not stay the night?’ asked Wendy of Casey. Wendy didn’t even have a cat. She didn’t like the smell of animals, she said. She could just about put up with a budgie, but that was all.

And dogs leap up and put muddy paws on clean clothes and these days Casey kept his good suits in the office and changed when he got there. He thought he’d better stay up in town a couple of days a week. The firm was busy.

‘No thanks,’ said Casey to Wendy, and he stayed with his aunts. But he did slap her bottom (no feminist she) and add, ‘You’re a very wicked woman, Wendy.’

Miranda was no longer interested in the rights of women, the vaginal orgasm, the cuisine of India or any of the things she used to know and care about. Now she read Pigs and Their Care and The Happy Poultry Keeper and Casey would crack open his breakfast egg (so many eggs!) and like as not find a baby chicken in it.

‘I say, Miranda,’ he said. ‘Let’s go on holiday. China, or somewhere.’

‘I can’t,’ she said briefly. ‘I can’t leave the animals.’

‘Stay over,’ begged Wendy. ‘You know you want to.’

‘Can’t,’ said Casey, firmly. ‘I love Miranda.’

Then Miranda got a goat. She got a nanny goat. Its name was Belinda. It was a delicate animal. Cold winds made it cough. It would be brought in to lie by the fire, in the evenings, with the four dogs. It smelt.

‘Miranda –’ said Casey.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ said Miranda. ‘But the goat-house isn’t wind-proof. I haven’t got round to mending it yet. I’ve been doing the sandbags.’ Highwater House had not got its name for nothing. In a wet winter it tended to flood.

‘I’m pregnant,’ said Hattie. ‘Since no one ever thinks about me I might as well get married.’

And so she did, to the young man with the knuckly hands. She sank into the peat bogs without a trace except for three children in as many years: they lived in a council house and took The Sun and kept hens in the garden and were, or so Miranda thought, happy enough. Casey was horrified.

‘Well,’ said Wendy, ‘you have to be careful with girls. Where they are is where they marry. Are you coming home?’

‘No,’ said Casey.

The nanny goat needed a billy goat. Miranda bought one in. It was very stubborn and Miranda’s thighs were so black and blue from where she’d pulled and it had butted that she and Casey could seldom make love. One night the central heating failed and Casey came home late from London – nearly midnight – and found Miranda asleep in a chair by the fire and the two goats lying on the marital bed. ‘I’d move them’, said Miranda, waking, ‘if I could. But you know how stubborn goats are.’

‘I’ll soon move them,’ said Casey, taking up the DIY axe.

‘Don’t be so brutish,’ said Miranda. ‘Besides, where else are they to go? I’m having heating put in the goat-house but it isn’t ready yet.’

The next time Wendy asked, Casey said ‘yes’, and he never left her either. How sparkly clean Wendy’s house was: it smelt of polish and scent: she sprayed her one pot-plant with insecticide. There was nothing living in the place except him, and her, and one well-trained busy Lizzie.

These days Miranda has a whole herd of goats, organically fed, and sells the best and finest low-fat goat’s yoghurt to Holland & Barrett: she does a very good line in goat’s cheese too. And the few friends who still call say to one another, ‘But she’s beginning to look like a goat – little mean eyes and stocky legs and a whiskery chin!’ I’m afraid that they are right. But Miranda is perfectly happy about it, we mustn’t forget that.