The sky was a forest of dark clouds swayed by a slow wind. There was a smell of rain, warning of the downpour to come. In the poor light the view from the farmhouse was indistinct. Hills, valley and fans of leafless trees were affected by this twilight gloom, so strange in early morning.
George came out of the house in his father’s leather jacket, some forty years old, infallible protection against the most bitter weather. It was to be his first day working full-time on the farm with Saul, who had been employed by David Elkin for the past twenty years. Saul’s wife Betty inherited the village post office from her parents, and used to run it with a flair that brought customers from miles away. She died when their son, Ben, was four years old. Saul looked after the child with no help, while his sister-in-law, Jenny, took on the post office, which thrived just as well as it did in Betty’s day. The child Ben spent every moment when not at school helping on the Elkin farm, and loved it. He could never be persuaded to go elsewhere for a holiday.
Ben grew up with ambitions to buy his own farm. As soon as he left school he was employed by Mr Elkin, and worked four days a week with Saul. A single free day enabled him to join a course in agriculture at a local college. While Ben admired his father’s experience and wisdom when it came to animals and crops, he himself was determined to acquire some formal knowledge of the science of modern farming. Saul had never had the opportunity to go to an agricultural college, and privately thought common sense and experience was all most good farming people needed. But when Mr Elkin offered to pay Ben’s fees, Saul wished his son well, and the theories Ben came home with made for lively arguments in the evenings.
Father and son were a good team: reliable, hard-working, of few words. George, like his father, trusted Saul’s judgement, had faith in his advice. Under his guidance the farm had grown and thrived. The eighties were good years for British farming. Subsidies were high, farmers were comparatively rich. When profits were made, David Elkin would always give a bonus to Saul above his salary, and George had every intention of continuing this practice. Also like his father before him, George would be responsible for the paperwork, for Saul was a man by nature uncomfortable sitting at a desk struggling with figures that confused him. To be on the seat of a tractor, or with his stick behind a flock of sheep, whistling to his dogs – that was the point of farming to Saul. In his opinion, to fret over rule books written in incomprehensible language was a waste of precious time.
On the dark morning that George walked towards the lambing shed where last year’s lambs were to be vaccinated and three lame rams were to have their hooves trimmed, he sensed the kind of pleasure – the kind of importance – that he knew would never have greeted him in a solicitor’s office. Even on his short journey to the shed he saw there was much to be done. The yard was cluttered with obsolete rusting machinery and piles of plastic sheeting discarded from stacks of big-bale silage – for which, as yet, there was no organised method of recycling. Over flagstones, wood, bolts and bricks a veil of green algae had run rampant. The yard needed scraping, scouring. He would do it himself, this afternoon, George thought. For a long time he had known there was too much work for Saul and Ben, but his father had resisted a third helper. Now, his contribution would make all the difference. He delighted in the idea of the improvements that would be made.
In the shed – a vast building with corrugated roof and support beams cut from local trees – Saul was already in the aisle among forty young sheep he had brought in from their pasture. The chorus of bleating, in which individual voices were audible, increased as George came in. The sheep sounded like a bad afternoon in the House of Commons, he thought, smiling to himself. There was no return smile from Saul. Buffeted by animals, he held the vaccinating needle high, ready to plunge into the first sheep to hand.
‘You’re here, then,’ he shouted. Tersely, thought George. With a glance at his watch he understood why. He had promised to be here at ten o’clock. He was five minutes late.
‘Sorry’
‘You take the spray’
George picked up the aerosol can of blue spray and pushed his way in among the clumps of shifting wool of Exmoor Horns and Poll Dorsets. He had often done this job before, but not for a good many years. He wanted to watch closely, observe exactly how Saul, with the swiftness and skill of experience, went about it.
Saul grabbed a ewe, which bucked backwards in protest. He jammed it up against the rails of the pen. In a movement so fast it was almost invisible, he parted a clump of the animal’s wool: the dirty white outer wool gave way to the pure cream of the wool near the skin. For a second there was the flash of a small pink star of flesh: Saul’s needle shot in and out of this minuscule target. George sprayed a gash of blue on the ewe’s spine. She was released. She kicked, moved away. The sympathetic bleats from the rest of the flock increased: or was it indignation, or anticipation of their own jab? George could not be sure. He supposed it would take a long time for anyone working with animals to understand their language. Saul moved on to the next sheep.
Grab, inject, spray, release: here was the rhythm old Mr Elkin so often said dominated life. George felt himself become part of a surreal dream. His legs were warmed by fat wool bodies, his hands were freezing cold. He was trapped in a whirl of outraged faces and oyster-coloured eyes – the Poll Dorsets had a particular look of indignation, like strangers on a bus. The Exmoor Horns, ‘stroppy buggers’, according to Saul, bred to withstand hard conditions on the moor, were more appealing with their close-set eyes and low, frizzy fringes. The faces of the two different breeds churned around George – their eyes, cautious, sideways-looking, never met his – they liked to keep their psychological distance. Their bleating became loud music turned up full blast, no light and shade, more of an atonic symphony than an uproarious House of Commons. George was suddenly aware of sweat running down his back. His hands were warm at last. Forty blue-marked spines shuffled: the job was done.
‘Rams, now,’ said Saul.
They climbed into the rams’ pen – three large creatures with camel faces of calm enquiry.
‘Never so frantic as the women,’ said Saul. Quickly injected and sprayed, it was time for their feet. Saul, not a large man but with astonishing strength in his bone-hard flesh, flipped one of the rams ignominiously on to its back, supporting it from behind. It did not protest, merely glanced up at the roof with the kind of bored look an opera singer reserves for the highest, cheapest seats.
‘You come and hold Hidden, I’ll do the clippers,’ Saul commanded.
‘Hidden?’
‘Every time I go down to th’ pasture, he be hidden.’
George had but a brief look at the ram’s indignity: front legs waving, stomach slouched like a beer drinker’s, scrotum lolling to one side. He admired the way the animal seemed to have risen above any embarrassment, stared at by dozens of ewes it had served. At a look from Saul, and scoffing at himself for all this unbidden anthropomorphising, he quickly moved to support the surprisingly heavy animal.
With a skill that made it look easy, Saul cleaned out each cloven hoof in turn. George was aware of a bitter, sickly smell from the matter that was gouged out. Then Saul applied his clippers to the overgrown hooves: semi-circles of indigo rind dropped on to the ground of flattened straw. The whole business quickly over, the three rams, heads cocked back, eyes flaring, dignity restored, stood patiently waiting to be returned to their field. George wondered if he would ever be able to accomplish such everyday, humdrum farm tasks as efficiently as Saul.
Later in the day, having dealt with a pile of tedious paperwork awaiting him in the farm office, George returned to the shed to help with the ewes’ evening feed. On the way there he met Saul returning the flock of ewe lambs that had been vaccinated that morning to their pasture. By now the sky had cleared of clouds: there was a low evening sun. George turned to watch the flock on its short journey. Saul’s two dogs, obeying his quiet commands, kept the flock in absolute control – a feat which always filled George with awe. The sheep shunted along in a close crowd, each animals’ armour of wool outlined in a halo of light. He was aware that this was a sight familiar to shepherds and farmers for thousands of years, and the thought kept him standing absolutely still until they were out of sight.
There was a final moment of private wonder in George’s first full day of work on his own farm. In the shed – where the hungry bleating of the pregnant ewes was in full force – he and Saul heaved down bales of straw from the stack, cut their strings and tossed them into the pens. George copied Saul. He pulled the bales apart, scattered armfuls of the bedding on to the floor of the pens. The ewes, eager for a change of their diet of hay and silage, barged and crashed towards each new pile – greedy, selfish, intent only on their own satisfaction. In bending low to spread the straw evenly, George found himself head to head with four or five ewes: fringes, horns, wary eyes, smiling black muzzles, all within inches of him. He could feel the warmth of their breath. He was aware that their interest in eating straw was quickly sated. For a moment he had a sensation of knowing quite positively what it was like to be a sheep. He was one of them.
‘No point ‘n bending over, you’ll do your back.’ George heard Saul’s voice, stood up quickly. He was embarrassed, confused by his ridiculous imaginings. By now all the sheep were feeding. Some, sated, were already lying down chewing the cud, wrinkled eyelids at half-mast. A sudden quiet washed through the great shed as does silence after music. The ewes, soon to give birth, appeared to be relishing their last few days of peace before maternal responsibility overtook them.
‘Settled down for th’ night, then,’ said Saul. He was drawing the blinds down over the open sides of the shed. And yes, thought George, that’s most probably all they were doing, simply settling down for the night. Once again he scoffed at his own sentimentality: of course pregnant ewes did not think ahead like women. Perhaps they did not think at all, though looking at the intelligent cut of some of their faces that was hard to believe.
The two men walked back together to the farmyard in silence. They would meet again tomorrow morning, soon after seven, in the shed for the morning feed. The pattern of the days, months, years would carry on till they could work no more. Already George was beginning to understand his father’s obsession with rhythm. For a farmer committed to the well-being of his animals, the growing of crops, the tending of the land, there was no escape from it. George was conscious, that morning, that he had finally stepped on to a treadmill that would become his life.
Saul went off to pick up his son who was at work on a job in the cowshed. George lit the kitchen fire, sat beside it. A pie Dusty had left in a chipped enamel dish that had borne pies for as long as George could remember warmed in the oven. Soon, he knew, he would be fit, muscles in trim. But this evening he sensed a frisson of physical fatigue. Beyond the ache in his back – and somehow confused with it – there was a yearning to talk to someone about his first day as a farmer. After he had eaten his supper he drove up to the Prodgers’.
Prodge’s car was not there, and the kitchen was empty. George went to the small room leading off it that was known as the office. The chaos there was even greater than in the kitchen. A vast desk was buried beneath files and papers accumulated over many decades. But it was the warmest room in the house, home to the most comfortable, battered sofa George had ever slumped upon. For hours of his childhood he and Prodge had used its corduroy seat as a battleground, plundering each other with a mass of half-dead cushions that in quieter times flopped over its back.
Nell was on an upright chair at her spinning wheel. She looked up, pleased and surprised by George’s appearance.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘End of day one as Farmer Elkin. I’m exhilarated, quite tired, though. I made the right decision. I did, Nell. I did.’
‘I can see you did.’
George lowered himself into his favourite corner of the sofa.
‘Where’s Prodge?’
‘Gone down the pub. Meeting some man who wants to help with the fencing. Want a cup of tea, a drink?’
‘No thanks, I’ve just eaten. Dusty looks after me well.’
‘That’s good. You need to eat properly, farming.’
Nell’s foot tapped away. She concentrated on a thread of wool the colour of oatmeal, reminding George of the flash of inner wool he had seen on the ewes this morning. He smiled.
‘I think you must be the only person for miles – maybe in the whole of England – who in the late twentieth century would rather spend an evening spinning than watching television. There can’t be many who even know how to spin these days. You make a very quaint picture.’
‘Tease me all you like. You’ve been teasing me all my life. Makes no difference.’
Nell was wearing a jersey that George recognised was knitted from wool she had spun and dyed. She made her dyes from greater celandine, rhubarb, powdered madder, horsetail hair fern, walnut shells, gorse flowers, lovage and copper sulphate, dyer’s broom … the names she had been mentioning for years came back to him in the quiet of the room. Once she had explained the technique of home dyeing. He remembered thinking the whole process sounded too complicated to understand, and had not paid much attention. But he did always notice the pale hedgerow colours of the jackets and jerseys she wore – thick, unfashionable country garments that would hold little appeal for the urban folk whose sartorial whims occasionally turned to rural life for inspiration.
‘How did it go, your first day?’ she asked.
‘Odd. Extraordinary. I went through strange sensations. Something to do with the proximity to the animals, perhaps. I kept on feeling … I knew what they felt. Ridiculous, I know’
‘We all go through that from time to time. But you’ll learn to detach yourself. Treat the whole thing as routine. You’ll be too busy to do much empathising. Just have to get on with the job, day in day out.’
‘Quite. That realisation, too, hit me hard. I mean, I’ve lived on the farm all my life, helped out quite a bit, but only in a dilettante sort of way. It didn’t matter if I was there or not: there was always Saul and Ben. And my father making the decisions. But now it’s my responsibility. And as for the physical work – well, I’m in poor shape. Office biceps, not that I was there long. Still, I’ll toughen up in a month or so, I daresay’
Nell pushed herself away from the spinning wheel and sat with her back to the fire.
‘You will.’ She held George’s eyes, encouraging.
‘I felt rather foolish,’ he said, ‘to have had such childish thoughts all day’
‘No need to.’
George shifted. With Nell, there had never been any need to be explicit. A few words were always enough for her to understand.
‘Did Prodge tell you he’d finished his shed?’
‘No,’ said George. ‘That’s fantastic. I must go up and see it, but I’m very busy tomorrow. I’ve got to get the slurry on the fields before this cold snap breaks.’
‘He’s the expert there,’ said Nell. ‘It’s all rather exciting, isn’t it?’
‘It is. It is. I love the planning. But it’s a bit unnerving, too. I mean, there’s so much to learn.’
‘And do you think you’ll ever get lonely up there?’ The question was so lacking in both earnestness and guile that George was able to smile.
‘I doubt it. If you set yourself a discipline, and have got plenty to think about that deflects thoughts from yourself, I doubt you can be lonely’
‘Not many would agree with you.’
‘Daresay not.’
‘Goes without saying, if ever … I mean Prodge and I are always here. We don’t like it if more than a few days go by without your coming over.’
‘As always.’
‘As always.’
Nell rose, went to a cupboard. When she opened the door there was a landslide of old magazines and papers. She left them on the floor, picked up a box and returned to her chair. None of this, George could tell by the languor of her movements, was a hint for him to leave. Had she wanted him to go, she would have said so. She was forthright, Nell: always had been. Much more so than her brother.
She began to sort balls of her wool into matching colours. He watched in silence as she picked up each fuzzy globe and chose a place for it in the box. Her hands were small but blemished: farmwork had battered them. But Nell was the least vain woman George knew. It would never occur to her to spend time polishing her nails or pampering her face. Years of West Country wind and rain had burnished her cheeks to an eternal russet. Even on the rare occasions she was ill, or tired, it was hard to tell. This evening, contemplating her at her modest task, George felt a keen anxiety for her future. What would happen to Nell? Where, in her hard-working life spent mostly in this remote area, would she find a husband? He could think of no suitable, available farmer. Nell had often laughed about the shortage of men, but said she didn’t care. Continuation of her present life was all she wanted, she claimed: she could think of nothing better. Though of course, should some perfect man come along then she might consider a change. She had often declared all this to George, looking him straight in the eye. He would nod in agreement, thinking it inappropriate to challenge her further.
‘Found anyone you fancy, Nell?’ George had not planned this question. It came out lightly, jokily.
‘No. Why? Where’d I find anyone?’
‘I don’t know. Out hunting.’
‘Well I haven’t.’ She looked up from her wool. ‘Why are you bothered?’
‘I’m not bothered, exactly. But from time to time I do wonder what’ll happen to us, to you.’
‘I don’t spend much time wondering. I’m just happy with things as they are. You know that. I’ve often said.’ She shuffled the wool again, rearranging balls she had just arranged with great care. Only the agitation in her hands gave the smallest clue to her feelings. ‘Prodge, though. There’s some girl down in Tiverton with an eye for him.’ She smiled. ‘He’s met up with her several times, market days. Bought her a few drinks. He says she’s a good-looker. But I think she’s leading him on.’
‘What makes you think that?’
Nell shrugged. ‘I get that impression, from what he says – and you know Prodge, he doesn’t say much. Anyhow, I said to him, if you’re thinking of bringing some girl here as a wife, upsetting all our arrangements, she’d better be a good ‘un or I’m off.’
They both laughed.
‘Don’t suppose it’ll come to that,’ said George. ‘Prodge has never been the fastest man to make decisions. Any woman he chose for his wife would have to be unusually reliable. He’d have to believe in her potential as a farmer’s wife before he made any move.’
‘I suppose so. But you know his moods. Sometimes he gets fixated on things. You remember how much he wanted to start a second herd, Jerseys? And how down he became when it didn’t work out? Just hope he doesn’t get obsessed with this Janine. Not that I’ve ever met her.’ She bit her lip. ‘And can’t say I’m that keen to do so.’
Nell put her box of wools on the floor – George could see how subtly they were regimented – and turned on him with sudden liveliness.
‘And what about you? All these cheeky questions to me …’
George shrugged, laughed. ‘I’ve got a long way to go being a farmer. I’m not going to have much time for anything else, drinks on market days with girls.’ He got up. ‘Better get going. Early mornings every day, from now on. Tell Prodge I was sorry to miss him. I’ll be back in a day or two, or you come over.’
‘I’ll ride over soon as I have a moment,’ said Nell. ‘Take my chance before lambing starts.’ She led him to the back door, stood with folded arms as he kissed her lightly on the forehead. Then he strode into the moonless dark of the yard. ‘Bitter night,’ she said.
George drove the mile home slowly. He rounded the corner that would bring the view of the house and the one light in the kitchen which he had left on. But there was more than one light: several windows were amber bricks suspended in the intense darkness. George accelerated into the yard not knowing what to expect, alarmed. A small car was parked: he did not recognise it. He hurried into the house. Had he turned on more lights, misremembered? What had happened? George charged into the kitchen, heart quickening.
Lily sat at the table, a mug of coffee beside her, reading an old copy of Farmers Weekly. Beside her on the floor was a large suitcase. She looked up, smiled.
‘George! Do you always leave the door open?’
Relief and anger clashed within George. He stared at her, unable to find words to express his annoyance. Gone, now, was the plan for instant bed, sleep. This intrusion would have to be explained. He could see he’d have to spend time listening.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I would have thought leaving the house unlocked, even in some remote place like this, was quite a risk.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Oh, George. Don’t be cross. I’m sorry. I should have warned you.’ Lily rose, holding the mug in both hands. ‘It was probably a silly idea. My car’s full of watercolours I’ve got to deliver back to the old woman near Exeter. I was having a bowl of soup in a pub somewhere, thinking I’d better stay the night there, when it came to me: why not go back to George?’ She shrugged, gave a slight giggle. ‘I rang you, but there was no answer. Perhaps it was foolish, such spontaneity?’
‘No,’ said George. As he stood eye to eye with her, he could feel the ache in his back, drifts of sleepiness, fading anger and other, stranger sensations he could not put a name to. At their previous meetings he had vaguely sensed, though not positively registered, that she was beautiful. Now he saw that was definitely so, but the fact did not reduce his irritation.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I can’t make excuses. The fact is, the truth is, I was … drawn to this place. I thought about it a lot.’ She released her eyes from George’s, looked round the room. George nodded. ‘I mean, of course I’ll go now, straight away, if that’s what you want.’
‘No, no,’ George said again, without enthusiasm.
‘You don’t sound overjoyed, but I’ll only stay a short while. Be off at any time you tell me.’
George sighed. ‘I’ll show you the spare room and we can talk about your stay tomorrow. Tomorrow evening, that is. Be busy all day.’
‘Fine.’ Lily lowered her head, sending a shoal of hair across her face full of pale sparks from the table light. George picked up her suitcase.
‘You don’t travel lightly, ’ he said.
‘But I cover a lot of ground.’ If she was trying to sound enigmatic, George thought, she failed.
They went up the staircase whose failing joints groaned with various notes of discomfort as their feet weighed upon them. They moved along a dark passage whose wooden floors dipped like a shallow boat. Their footsteps were quietened here by strips of carpet, its ribs breaking through its pile, that George’s mother had laid many years ago. He opened a door into a large room with a small window. There was a smell of mothballs, a suggestion of damp.
‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Not very grand. Hasn’t been used much since my mother died.’
‘It’s fine.’ Lily’s eyes journeyed over the dark furniture, the wallpaper of dun stripes, the sad little curtains, the bed plainly unmade beneath its cover.
‘I’ll get you some sheets.’
George went to the cupboard in his bathroom. It housed a cladded hot water tank and shelves piled with linen. Its thick smell of warm linen was a flash of remembered childhood. George had often hidden in this cupboard, squeezed behind the tank, in games of hide and seek. He had crouched uncomfortably for ages, waiting for his friends to find him – which of course they never did, even when they opened the door for a moment, allowing him a small blast of bathroom cold air and a moment of light. He had thought it would be a good place to die, the linen cupboard. Now, standing helplessly in front of the banks of sheets, he realised it was the first time in his life he had ever had to choose a pair. Dealing with bed linen was a part of domestic life from which he had always been protected by able women – his mother, a scout at Oxford, Dusty. Jesus, I’ve been spoilt, he thought, and tugged at two sheets he hoped would be the right size.
In the spare room, holding them flat on his spread hands like a tray, he presented them to Lily. She had already hung a number of things in the oak cupboard.
‘Shall I help you make the bed?’
‘Course not.’
‘You’ll be all right?’ Even as he asked, George was aware that he did not care very much. The well-being of an uninvited guest, in his fatigued state, lacked importance.
‘I will.’
‘Tomorrow, help yourself to whatever … Dusty’ll be here if you want anything. Take a look round the farm, perhaps.’
‘Don’t you worry about me.’ Lily dropped the unfolded sheets on to the bed and came over to George. ‘;I won’t be a nuisance, I promise. I’ll deliver the pictures then come back and go for a long walk. Then you can give me my marching orders tomorrow evening if you want. I won’t take offence, I promise.’ She smiled, a little wearily. ‘But it’s lovely to be back … Just look, George.’ Her arm swept across the vista of the room with a small jangle of bracelets. ‘Imagine how all this could be.’
George, who could not imagine the room any different from its present cheerlessness, nodded. Lily’s way of insisting on looking at things returned to him clearly, irritatingly. She would be not only an uninvited but also an exhausting guest. He would permit just a few days, then she would have to be off. George was about to put his hand on her shoulder, tell her this, when she moved away to draw the curtains. He said goodnight and left without further exchange.
In bed, the sheep-thoughts turned into thoughts of Nell: how to explain to her about Lily? Did he need to explain? And why should it bother him? No answers came before he fell asleep.