Constance had never visited a working farm. She’d been to a children’s petting zoo, where she’d stroked a guinea pig and fed a goat and she’d been on one or two walks across fields which were probably farmland, on a long weekend in Yorkshire. But she hadn’t ever met a real farmer before – not one who drove a tractor or worked a sheepdog or milked a cow. Now her curiosity and Judith’s request for answers had brought her to Mark Sumner’s smallholding, in the wilds of Hertfordshire.
She found no one at home when she rapped at the door of the house, a quaint but unassuming stone-built property, with huge sash windows and a short gravel drive. She checked her watch and then the message she had exchanged with Mark only this morning, which confirmed they had agreed on a 2pm meeting. She looked around her. To her left, the road became narrow as it progressed towards the open fields, but without any indication of how far it continued. Following her instinct, she skirted the house and found herself standing in a small, neat walled garden. There was a low gate leading into yet more fields, the closest of which was filled with an extensive glass structure. She was about to turn around and try the road when a woman came out of the greenhouse, noticed her and waved.
‘Hello, you must be the lawyer,’ the woman said, hurrying towards her. ‘I’m Rachel, Mark’s wife. He’s out at the barn; said to send you down.’
‘Thank you,’ Constance said. ‘Looks like you have your hands full with all this.’
Rachel nodded. ‘Who wants to be idle?’ she said. ‘And Mark needs the open space. He’d drown in the city.’
She led Constance back to the front driveway and pointed along the road. ‘Over there,’ she said. ‘Just keep going and you’ll see the barn on your right. But…’ she looked down at Constance’s feet and tutted. ‘All that rain we had last week. Why don’t you borrow some boots? I have a spare pair in the hallway, just inside the front door. It’s a shame to spoil your shoes.’
Two minutes later, Constance found herself waddling along the single-track road in the Sumners’ Wellingtons, remembering that the last pair she had worn had been at least twenty years earlier. Those had been shiny and red, with a chunky blue sole and she’d cried when she’d outgrown them and been forced to hand them on to her brother. This pair was quite different; matt olive green with a deep, beige tread and gaping at the top. Constance found herself thrusting her hands into her pockets and lengthening her stride, as if she were a farmer herself, stepping out for a quick once-over of her estate.
As she trudged along, she inhaled the smells of the countryside, noticing for the first time the complete absence of noise. Except that not all noise had been removed. She heard a bird tweeting from a hedgerow to her left, only to be answered by another in a tree further ahead, a loose fence post creaked in the wind and the low whine of a train was just audible in the distant background.
Constance reached the barn quickly, but entering it involved navigating a boggy morass, which began near an overflowing water trough. She could see a man, whom she assumed was Mark, shifting hay from one side of the barn to the other. He wasn’t overly broad, but his arms were well-muscled and his tightly-fitted t-shirt revealed a similarly taut chest. He wore airpods in his ears and she heard him singing to himself, as he drifted across her field of vision.
She called out ‘Mr Sumner. I’m Constance Lamb. We spoke yesterday. You said to just come along.’ She waited, reluctant to leave the shiny world of birdsong behind and to intrude on him. He didn’t respond immediately but then, as the sun came out behind her, catapulting her shadow into the space between them, he noticed her. He removed his earpieces and Constance repeated her greeting.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘And then I completely forgot. There’s been a lot going on recently.’ Mark exited the barn, trampling through the stinking stream of water. ‘I’m going to check on the cows. Walk with me and we can talk at the same time.’ And he gave Constance little choice, as he headed through a gate and took off across the next field.
Mark didn’t particularly look like a farmer, Constance thought. First of all, he was much too young. And then she had imagined wavy hair and a hat. But he did have a beard, albeit closely cropped, like his hair. And, as he passed by, she noticed an inking on his wrist, some words she couldn’t quite make out.
‘You want to talk about last Tuesday?’ he asked, as he strode on and Constance struggled to keep up. The ground was soft in places, even away from the barn, and her boots were large and unsupportive. She didn’t want to turn her ankle.
‘Whatever you can tell me,’ she said, swinging her arms, so the momentum would help propel her forward and maintain her balance.
‘You’re the lawyer for the caterer?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought it was a heart attack. Not that I know about these things. But so sudden like that. Adrian said that’s what he thought and, I mean, he’s a doctor. Now they think it was the food?’
‘You sound sceptical?’
Mark slowed down, indicating to Constance that he was pondering her question and she slotted in next to him.
‘I can’t answer that,’ he said. ‘But the reason we have autopsies is to find out what kills people, isn’t it? Anyway, it isn’t good for any of us who were there, for food to have killed him. Food is what we’re all about.’
Another one trying to protect his pocket. Constance was transported back to that East London bench, with the daffodils bellowing their sanctimonious message in her ear. ‘What did Brett eat at the meeting?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t really watching.’
‘And you?’
‘That’s easy. There were trays of beef burgers with all the trimmings. I wasn’t so keen on the raw meat. I left that for the blogger. And I had some fruit, although that led to a big debate.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Rosa, from the TV, she started on about the mango, said maybe we shouldn’t eat it – carbon footprint and all that. I wasn’t bothered, but in the beef industry, we’re trying so hard to make people see the benefits of eating British beef, not importing it, so I had to agree with her. To be honest, I was just trying to be polite.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Oh I don’t know. Adrian waded in, you know, Dr Edge. He was a bit of a dick, really, excuse the expression. Out of order. Maybe he didn’t realise Rosa’s family’s from Mexico. Not that that should matter, but he started on at her, saying she was a hypocrite for eating avocados. He was a bit of a dick all through lunch, actually. Luckily, Brett smoothed it over. I’m probably making more of a big deal of it than it really was.’
Mark slowed down again, as they reached another field, all the time walking parallel to the narrow road, just visible over the low bushes. This time he held the gate open for Constance and they continued towards a small herd of cattle. Constance began to lag behind, eyeing the cows warily. Mark turned around and waited for her, clearly sensing her reluctance.
‘They won’t hurt you,’ he said. ‘I promise. Come,’ and he seized her hand.
He led Constance slowly on, until they were within a metre of the animals. Then, just when she thought she was going to have to make a fuss, to make him let her go, he released her and stroked the nearest beast along her flank. The cow turned her head towards him and licked his free arm. He whispered in her ear and her tail flicked one way and then the other, swatting the flies off her back.
‘See how beautiful they are. And how happy,’ he said. ‘This one is Klara, my personal favourite, although I don’t tell her that often, so that she doesn’t get big-headed.’ He smiled for the first time.
Constance didn’t reply. The cows were even larger, close-up, than she had imagined – absolutely huge. How much must they weigh? Twenty, thirty stone? Before embarking on her journey today, as part of her customary research, this time into farming methods, she had read a story about cows trampling a man to death. In an interview, all the locals had said how docile the cows usually were, that it was out of character, that the man’s dog must have scared them. That didn’t reassure Constance for one moment, now she was in close proximity to a dozen of them, although Mark’s presence helped, as well as the fact that he was located between her and the herd.
‘I get it. Beef has had a bad press,’ Mark said, as he moved from one cow to the next to greet each one. ‘First it was Mad Cow Disease, but we survived that – just – although that was before my time. My dad had to navigate that. Then the environment stuff and, yes, we can’t stop them altogether, but scientists have proved that grass-fed cows produce far less methane and that it does decompose eventually. We have to tell people that they’re buying British beef; then they’ll have confidence in what they’re eating. You can’t say the same about the fruit we import. It’s double standards.’
Constance kept her distance. ‘I don’t know much about it,’ she said, ‘but I imagine it’s quite hard to grow mangos here, or avocados.’
‘Then we should do without. That’s what the campaigners say,’ Mark said. ‘Eat mangos when we’re in Barbados, although if the climate change lobby have their way, we’ll never be able to get to Barbados in the first place. Funny world, isn’t it?’
‘Is that what you were going to talk about, at the meeting?’
‘I…I was going to try to explain to the doubters, not just the animal rights brigade, that we do things right here in Britain. Our cattle have lovely lives roaming free, as you can see. They eat a healthy diet and enjoy life.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How do you know they’re happy?’
‘Come,’ he beckoned to her and she shook her head. ‘I’m not answering any more questions till you’ve had a go.’ He stood with his hand outstretched and Constance could see his tattoo more clearly; the words travelling away from her, up his forearm in looping script: God made me a farmer, she read. She laughed to herself at the joke.
Still wary but determined not to give up on her interrogation yet, she took Mark’s hand again, then leaned forward and allowed her fingertips to graze Klara’s side. The cow’s hide felt warm and soft and reassuringly solid. Klara turned her head a fraction in Constance’s direction, blinked heavily, then moved away. Constance withdrew her hand.
‘Not so bad, eh?’ Mark said, and Constance thought that now he was with the cows, stroking them, whispering to them and tickling them around the ears, his manner was softer than before, his rough edges smoothed away, like a pebble washed by the tidal stream. ‘To answer your question,’ Mark continued, ‘I was reading this week, there’s a guy in Holland who reckons he knows from their expression.’
‘Their expression?’ Constance couldn’t keep the scepticism from her voice.
‘I’m not saying I agree with him, but he claims he’s filmed thousands of cows and he can tell if they’re relaxed just from their faces. He’s not totally wrong. I mean, that’s the kind of thing I look for too, but for me it’s the whole package, how they’re moving, the noises they make. Sometimes they stare and they open their eyes really wide, so you can see the white rim. Then they’re scared. I know that. Anyone who keeps cows knows that. These ladies right now? I can guarantee, one hundred per cent, they’re calm, they’re healthy, they’re happy.’
Constance registered how Mark’s face lit up as he spoke and she was almost convinced. Almost but not quite. At that moment, a lorry drew up on the road, with a clatter, the driver wound down his window and leaned out, brandishing some sheets of paper.
‘I’m looking for the farmhouse. Rachel Sumner?’ he called out to them over the hedgerow.
‘You drove right past it,’ Mark said. ‘You can turn around just ahead, then you’ll see it on your left, before the main road.’ The lorry trundled off. ‘You think they’d send the same delivery man,’ Mark complained, as it disappeared around a corner. ‘Every week it’s someone different and they always get lost.’
‘What are they bringing?’
‘Oh…some things for Rachel. That’s all.’
‘Do you grow crops here too?’
‘Uh…yes. Mostly behind the farmhouse, where we have more land. Shall we head back?’
Constance noticed Mark’s hesitation. Had she used the wrong terminology? Did people only say ‘crops’ in textbooks or on the News? In any event, if the conversation was coming to an end, she had one more question to ask. It had been on the tip of her tongue when the lorry had interrupted them. Instinctively, she took a step back and lowered her voice, as if the cattle might understand. ‘If you love the cows so much, isn’t it difficult to kill them?’
And right on cue, Klara let out a loud moo. Mark laughed out loud and patted her head, before waving Constance onto the lane leading back to the house.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You know, I heard Marco Pierre White talking on the radio the other day. Rachel likes to listen to Radio Four when she’s cooking. Bit over my head, but it keeps my well-educated wife happy.
‘Anyway, some of it I couldn’t follow – Michelin stars and all that and lots of French. But then he was talking about how they kept rabbits when he was a boy and how, when his mother used to cook one, she would use fresh herbs and spend hours preparing it and then serve it to them all with a smile, but with tears in her eyes. You know, they had to do it; they had to eat. But she’d at least make sure she gave the rabbit a good send-off. That’s kind of how I feel with my girls, although I don’t kill them myself and I’m not eating Klara here. But someone has to do it, if we’re all going to eat. Feed the world and all that.’
As they followed the muddy tyre tracks of the wayward lorry back towards the farmhouse, Constance thought about Mark’s response; that he accepted his role was to nurture his animals, only to give them up to myriad strangers’ dinner tables. She had meant her question as a direct challenge, picking up the gauntlet he had thrown down, when he forced her to touch the cows. But Mark seemed unmoved as he tramped along at her side.
***
Constance had left the narrow lane leading to the Sumners’ farm and walked another thirty metres along the road towards the railway station before she remembered she was still wearing the borrowed boots. Chastising herself for her carelessness, she retraced her steps and, as she turned into their driveway, she could see Mark and his wife, Rachel, in profile, through the kitchen window. Rachel, her back to Mark, appeared to have her hands inside a basin and Mark had wrapped his arms around her waist. As Constance watched, Rachel turned around and waved flour-covered fingers at him. When he didn’t retreat, she touched one to his nose. He laughed and held her even tighter.
Constance swallowed hard. This was awkward. Should she just leave and post the boots back? Or she could reverse a few metres and make a loud noise, out of view, then wait a few seconds to make sure they had heard her and disengaged. But she was also conscious that the next train to London left in twenty minutes and, if she missed that, it would be another forty minutes to wait. In the end, she did neither. Instead, she crept slowly towards the front door.
She opened it a few centimetres, reached around it and grabbed her shoes from the hallway. But the door into the kitchen must also have been open, because she could immediately hear Rachel questioning Mark, with a light, playful tone.
‘What did she want, the lawyer?’
‘Just asking about last Tuesday,’ she heard Mark reply. ‘If everyone got on, what Brett said and did, what he ate.’
‘And you told her?’
‘What I remembered, most of it, yes.’
‘You didn’t tell her…’
‘No, of course not.’
Constance should just leave now, but she found herself continuing to listen.
‘Do you think she’ll find out, digging around Brett?’ Rachel asked.
‘I doubt it. She just wants to know whether her guy fed him something that killed him. I don’t see why she’d be interested in us.’
‘She came out back, into the garden, saw the greenhouses.’
‘So what?’
Constance heard a scraping noise, then a shuffle of feet, then the sound of a cupboard door opening and closing. She held her breath, her shoes still dangling from her fingers.
‘Nothing,’ Rachel said. ‘It’s just that we’ve kept things quiet this long.’
‘And with a bit of luck, we won’t have to do it for much longer.’ Mark sighed. ‘You worry too much.’
‘We’re just so close and we haven’t had much luck so far. And who knows what will happen now Brett’s dead?’
‘It’s fine, all of it. You know, it might even be a good thing that he’s gone.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Sometimes you have to just get on with things yourself, you know, take things into your own hands.’
There was a silence then, during which time, Constance pulled off the boots and put on her shoes. But she couldn’t resist eavesdropping one last time.
‘Brett wasn’t always so good at that,’ she heard Mark say. ‘He was trying to juggle too many balls.’
Constance closed the door, left the boots on the outside step and tiptoed away from the house, but once she reached the road for a second time a feeling of dread seized her. She had thought Mark had been cooperative and open. Now that it turned out he had a secret, she realised her judgment had been poor. But, worse than that, she couldn’t tell anyone about this last revelation, not even Judith, because she had not discovered it by legitimate means. She couldn’t possibly confess to listening in on what was plainly a private conversation. She turned it over and over in her mind without resolving her dilemma. On the journey back into London, she found the solution. Until she could determine what Mark’s secret was in an open and transparent way, she would keep what she had overheard to herself. That had to be right. It was probably nothing important anyway.