towards the farmhouse. The blood flowed through his fingers, and the words in his head clustered like his cherished birds in the north field.
Soon there would be no bees left to forage in the grass, and no meadows. That was the way things were going. No tiny friction of crickets in the crops. No insects. No fungi running spores through the earth. No sighting of hares perched on chalky outcrops. No skylarks to loose their black arrows into the sky. No cowslip, burnet, toadflax and green-winged orchid.
‘Breakfast.’ Penny, his wife, had opened the kitchen window a crack, shouted through and closed it quickly against the dollop of cold air that slapped her round, unmade-up face. She sounded… not cross exactly but unsettled, a tone that was becoming habitual.
The words slithered away.
Andrew let himself in by the back door, shucked off his boots, washed his hands and padded across the kitchen in his socks. Penny was frying at the stove. As usual, her kitchen was immaculate, dishes stacked, pans shining, noticeboards displaying the weekly schedule, addresses, the bill rota and social engagements. Over by the window that looked out on to the yard and to the clump of ancient oaks beyond, which marked the boundary of the farm, was the latest pile of the women’s magazines that were Penny’s reading matter. Each month, Penny bought her favoured ones – every year more numerous – and read them, word for word, digging up from their pages the explanation to everything. And if one contained information on infertility, it was always left open for Andrew’s attention. Then his mind snapped shut and, invariably, he ignored it. Penny and Andrew were childless, and the empty space had burned into their marriage. At first they had talked about it and visited the doctors but, as their hopes dwindled, so did the occasions when he turned to her in the double bed, or she to him.
He had grown to hate the magazines, and their disinformation, especially as, in the early years when he teased Penny about them – but never too hard for he was a gentle man – she sulked.
Penny placed a fried breakfast in front of Andrew and they ate listening to the radio. Eventually, she fixed her eyes on him and asked, ‘When’s this woman coming?’
In the early days, Andrew had loved Penny’s habit of gazing at him. Loving and trusting, her eyes had seemed larger then. Nowadays, her scrutiny made him uncomfortable, as if she saw into his secrets, his conviction that the world was a greedy, unjust place.
‘She asked if she could come as early as possible because she wants to do some research in Exbury. Ten? Ten thirty? Depends on the roads.’
Penny washed up with a lot of swilling of suds. ‘I suppose this means you’ll go all arty on me.’ The implication was: and leave me out.
Andrew suppressed a sigh. Just because once he had confessed that, if he had not been a farmer, he would have liked to be some sort of writer, a poet maybe, Penny had held it against him. ‘For someone who’s so
Lately, Andrew had begun to wonder if Penny was involved with someone else, specifically with Bob Howell, who ran a dairy farm the other side of the moor. He had no proof, only a gut feeling – a reference in a conversation, a phone call terminated when he entered the kitchen unexpectedly, Bob’s refusal to meet his eye in the pub. Strangely enough, part of him did not care if she was. Or he thought it didn’t but maybe that was something to do with the changes that threatened his life. And his marriage? If he was honest, Penny and he no longer functioned as a proper couple.
He searched in his pockets for a piece of paper on which he had jotted some notes, hauled them out and studied them.
‘What
He raised his head. ‘What are
Her gaze dropped and she placed a saucepan on the stove with extra emphasis. ‘That’s not answering the question.’
‘Isn’t it?’ he said, his secret settling like a dog in a basket.
‘Just don’t lose sight of the fact,’ Penny was saying, ‘that we’ve got to save this farm. You’ve got to fight, Andrew, so you can’t get all distracted.’
Andrew heard the car drive into the yard, and went to greet Agnes at the back door. As she scrambled out of the car, his eyes widened in appreciation. ‘The photo in the paper didn’t do you justice,’ he said awkwardly, and led her into the kitchen to introduce her to Penny.
The kitchen was basic, but blissfully warm and clean, with immaculate touches. A dresser with blue china, a pair of old carver chairs, and a huge, burnished mirror on one wall that did not belong in a kitchen but actually suited it. In contrast to her rangy husband, Penny was small and plump, with badly permed hair and sharp-looking eyes, which were fretworked with fine lines a lighter colour than the rest of her complexion. While Penny was making coffee, Agnes inquired as to the date of the house, which she had expected to be much older.
‘This house? It was built in the sixties.’ Obviously Penny took the speaking role in this marriage. She heaved the tray of coffee over to the table. ‘The old house collapsed so Charlie Stone, our landlord’s father, built this one and leased it to Andrew’s father. When he died, Andrew took over. Now Jonas, his son, is trying to chuck us out.’
‘So Andrew has lived here all his life?’
‘Yes.’ Penny seemed tired and unfriendly. Agnes gained the impression of a woman who, over the years, had been disappointed, not drastically, but cumulatively.
‘And you say you’re being chucked out?’
Husband and wife exchanged a look, and Andrew shrugged. ‘As I told your colleague, the landlord has got into debt and wants to sell the land to a developer for a housing estate.’
‘Aren’t you protected by the law?’
‘That’s the problem,’ said Andrew. ‘The lease was reissued in the sixties and the landlord wrote in a water- tight clause that says he can chuck us out precisely when he wants to.’ White-knuckled, he rubbed at his broken fingers. ‘The solicitor has gone over it with a fine-tooth comb.’
She heard the underlying note of tension.
Andrew continued, ‘We farm organic beef here. No pesticides, hormones or stress. The cattle graze on untreated grass and live in family groups. We sell the meat all over the south. There’s a growing market out there.’
This fidelity to the old ways and old knowledge fascinated Agnes and she was warming to this slow-speaking farmer, who had taken to heart the responsibility for his land.
‘You say you’ve lent the letters to the local librarian,’ she said. ‘Is it possible I could look at them? If I felt there was something to work with, there is a television series which runs in the autumn called
‘Oh,’ said Penny, and stiffened. ‘What sort of research?’
Agnes noticed the body language. ‘Authentication. It’s usually done with wills, electoral rolls, constituency maps, that sort of thing. Don’t worry. Bel, my co-director, specializes in it. Usually it’s not a problem.’
Andrew produced an unremarkable grey file with a clip to keep the papers in place. Written on the spine in faded ink were the words: ‘Cattle Feed’.
‘The letters were mixed up with old bills for cattle-cake and that sort of thing.’ He slid the empty file across the table. ‘They were all jumbled up date-wise,’ he said. He reached for a leather tobacco pouch on the table, and his unfastened shirt cuffs fell back over wrists as warm and brown as walnut wood.
He made Agnes think of summer and the outdoors, of fields and sun, of blackberries and hips and autumn mist burned away by the sun. Her eyes slid past him to the mirror on the wall in which was reflected the trio at the kitchen table. Penny, cross and hostile; Andrew, intent, absorbed in the drama of the letters. Herself? Listening hard with the calm, professional expression she had perfected. The winter sun had shifted and light bounced off the mirror, directing a dazzling, exuberant beam at her.
‘Are you sure the writer, this Jack, lived here at Tithings?’