‘Don’t patronise me,’ she hurls back.
‘Calm down, big Maggs. Why not do something more useful like fetch a plaster or something? Simon, you alright, man? Do you want me to take over?’
‘No, I’m c-c-cool. I’ll d-d-drive this load b-b-back to the barn.’
‘Honestly, Simon, I don’t know why you’re not furious with that git.’ Maggie glares at David as she and Simon whirr past.
Amy and David follow behind on foot.
‘It’s Seymour’s crap machinery that’s the problem,’ David says. He passes her a joint. ‘Try this, babe. Gerald brought it over the other days. It’s amazing grass, get you high as the hills.’
‘Perhaps you didn’t secure the fitting properly. You…you weren’t smoking this morning, were you?’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Amy, you sound so po-faced. You sticking up for Seymour again?’ he snaps.
‘Why are you always getting smashed?’ she shouts back.
In the distance, Andrew Bishop is on a tractor winnowing the cut grass in another one of Seymour’s fields. Turning it over speeds up drying and makes the hay dry more quickly. More nutritious, he explained to her. His family had farmed in this valley for three generations. His father, Michael, bought land from Seymour when he wanted rid of a marshy field. Mr Bishop had never met a man who preferred owning a sports car to land. But London people were a strange breed. Once drained, the land provided fine grazing while Seymour’s metal possession disintegrated in the yard. Michael will hire out his son’s services if Mr Stratton will pay. The cash will buy a new concrete floor for the pig pen.
David insists the bales are left to be unloaded the next day. ‘You should rest, mate, after your accident. Let’s have a smoke. Come on, let’s go back to the farmhouse.’
‘Clean the cut for him!’ Maggie shouts as her brother leaves with Simon. She turns to Amy. ‘How can you stand living with him? He’s selfish and lazy and never takes responsibility for anything that doesn’t suit him.’
‘He was really worried about Simon. He just felt a bit defensive,’ she says.
‘I’m not sure he cares that much. Or, frankly, sees what’s going on right under his nose.’ Maggie stares at her. ‘Just as well, eh?’
If only Eleanor had come with him. Seymour assured her that the ‘the hippies’, as she called them, would not be hogging the bathroom or spread-eagling themselves across the sofas. For they lived across the yard in the cottage, he emphasised. He didn’t mention Julian was still in the farmhouse. He couldn’t force him to live in that crowded little cottage.
But Eleanor refused. If she was there Seymour would not galvanise himself to have ‘the conversation’ that needed to be had with ‘the scroungers’. Eleanor could be forthright, cruel sometimes, but she had a point. If Julian’s friends dreamed of living off the land, let them go and try it for themselves without the ‘shield of Stratton’. Did they not realise that the 60s were long gone?
Less necessary was her quip that having them around let Seymour to indulge a fantasy that he was their age. Cruel of her to reiterate the difference in years.
Perhaps she was right. Jars of jam lining the larder shelves and the freezer packed to the hilt with frozen beans sealed with the suburban twist were domestic signs he could tolerate. But when he found his records filed in alphabetical order that was different. Seymour disapproved of disapproval, of course, but order – or more precisely – someone else’s order – was not the way he wanted to live. Julian’s pals needed to move along.
Now the cottage was habitable, Bob was free for the next job; building a darkroom for Seymour, a space where he could work in peace. Then perhaps he’d think about improvements to the farmhouse. Eleanor might be persuaded to visit more often if the place was tarted up.
Seymour opens a bottle of red wine and pours himself a glass. He puts on the live Randy Newman album to help him think. He’ll have to let Amy down, of course: he’ll be gentle. Perhaps it had been wrong of him to start sleeping with her? But the girl had had such a difficult time, losing her mother and so on, and his attentions seemed to help. She said it was comforting to talk to him. He couldn’t imagine why. What the young failed to realise is that everyone makes mistakes; age simply provides experience in covering them up.
Despite her rose-tinted chatter about creating a new society, he likes her and is obsessed with her body. But he has felt this way about other women he has had to ‘bid farewell’ to. From long experience he knows the feelings pass.
It will feel uncharacteristic but he will talk about money. He is a man of magnanimity and generous impulse, not an accountant. But penury will be his excuse. He’ll tell Julian’s four friends that that he needs to rent the cottage out in order to raise cash. Sorry and all that, but they’ll have to find somewhere else to live.
At seven o’clock, Amy appears in the kitchen. She has dressed carefully. She wears David’s white shirt over tight jeans and clogs she’d painted silver. Her hair is pinned up high; a few pale strands trail her neck. She feels good. She’s missed her lover. She brushes his lips with her fingers as she wafts past. They’re alone. Everyone else is in the cottage getting smashed.
‘You’re glamorous,’ he says, ‘and just so you can cook supper. I’m flattered. Wine?’
‘Yes, thanks. You know everything we’re eating tonight was grown here,’ she says with pride. ‘Spinach and Daisy-cheese pie, tomatoes with berries and yoghurt for pudding. I think more and more people will want to live together communally to buy and grow their own food, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know, sounds a bit unlikely to me. Anyway, the grapes in the wine – they aren’t ours – though if what those climate scaremongers say is right, soon I can have my
