Another Life

by Sara MacDonald

  By the time she reached the farm down an endless rutted lane, her rucksack felt like lead. She was cold and wet and already unsure what on earth she was doing. Two dogs barked wildly in a farmyard that seemed deserted, but away on the other side of the farm buildings, in a large, sloping field sheltered by hedges, she could see two covered wagons and figures bent in the rain to the yellow-green rows of daffodil buds.

  A woman came out of the farmhouse to see why the dogs were barking. She was wiping her hands on a cloth and smiled across at Gabby shivering on the other side of the gate.

  ‘Are you a picker?’ she called.

  Gabby nodded earnestly.

  ‘Come into the yard, the dogs won’t hurt you.’ The woman shouted at the dogs and Gabby pushed the gate open and walked in.

  ‘You’ll need to see my husband,’ the woman said. ‘At the moment everyone is up with the wagons.’

  She stared at Gabby and smiled. ‘You do look cold and miserable, come in for a minute and I’ll make you coffee.’

  The kitchen was warm and fuggy and smelt strongly of turps, as did the woman herself. She went to wash her hands at the sink.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Coffee, please,’ Gabby said, leaning against the warm Aga. The woman reached in front of her and lifted a huge kettle off the hob and poured hot water on instant coffee. Gabby was to remember the smell of that coffee and of turpentine and dog as the moment her life began to change.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying,’ the woman said, ‘you don’t look like a daffodil picker. Have you done it before?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Gabby said. ‘But I’m a hard worker and I can learn fast.’

  The woman smiled at her doubtfully. ‘It really is backbreaking work. Where do you come from?’

  ‘Oh,’ Gabby said quickly, ‘I’m staying with friends in Penzance for Easter and I wanted to earn a bit of money, before I go to uni …’

  Gabby’s heart raced at this outright lie. She was unnerved by the way the woman was looking at her. She disliked lying and the woman was kind. She gulped down the hot coffee gratefully, in silence.

  When she had finished the woman said gently, ‘I can hear the tractor. It’s probably better if you wait outside and then you will seem more like a seasoned picker. Good luck …’

  ‘Looking for work?’ the farmer asked, walking towards her. He was an unsmiling man in his forties.

  Gabby nodded.

  ‘Don’t suppose you’ve picked before?’ He was looking her up and down.

  ‘No,’ Gabby said, for there was no point lying.

  ‘I’ll take you on trial for a week.’ His lips twitched in an imitation of a smile. ‘Most don’t last that long.’

  He bent and uncoupled his trailer of picked and bunched daffodils and hitched another empty trailer to the tractor. He motioned her to get into the trailer and then he went into the house.

  Gabby stood miserably in the trailer as an icy wind blew at her from the sea. She was cold and hungry and the day had not even started. The farmer and his wife came out of the house together and the woman handed Gabby a small bag.

  ‘It’s a piece of cake, I should eat it now. Once you start picking there is virtually no stopping until the end of the day.’

  The farmer started-up the tractor and they lurched up the lane towards the yellow daffodil fields. He pulled in behind other wagons that were filling up with the tight green buds and Gabby climbed self-consciously out of the trailer.

  ‘Now,’ the man said, ‘I’ll start you off with a seasoned picker and they’ll show you how it’s done. There’s a knack and a speed to it, some people get the rhythm of it and some don’t. The ones that don’t, don’t last. It’s too tiring and you won’t earn enough. A good picker can earn thirty to sixty pounds a day. I pay five pence a bunch. There are no stops other than a half-hour lunch break. A wagon will pick you up at the end of the day and take you to the end of the lane at five p.m. for the bus. We start at seven-thirty in the morning. Come this way.’

  He hesitated and looked down at Gabby. ‘Some of the women are rough and you’ll get some stick, so it won’t do to be too sensitive. Just close your ears and pick.’

  He called over to a boy and he stopped picking. ‘Go over there to Jason. Off you go.’

  ‘Right,’ Jason said, ‘what’s your name?’

  ‘Gabrielle.’

  ‘Too posh, I’ll call you Gabby. Now, you mustn’t pick too short or too long. The stems must be of uniform length. Ten stems a bunch. Here are your rubber bands. Pick and bunch like this …’

  He bent and his fingers moved deftly, picking the stems swiftly at the same place and bunching them expertly with a leaf before going on to the next. He made it look easy.

  ‘Either put your bunches on the ground as you go and collect them later or move them along with you and put them in the basket at the end of a row.’

  Gabby bent and picked quickly. Ten stems a bunch. Two heads of the daffodils broke and as she tried to bunch them the sticky sap from the stems stuck to her fingers and they fell in a heap at her feet. Jason smiled, not unkindly.

  ‘I should get some gloves, the sap can irritate. Don’t try to go too fast. Pace yourself the first day and don’t expect to earn much. Fast-pickers – some can pick with two hands – get the best rows, I’m afraid. OK, let’s get on. You work those four rows … I’ll be over there.’

  Gabrielle looked quickly across the field at the other pickers then bent her head and bent and picked, bent and picked. She was so slow the boy Jason was way in front of her. She picked for hours without establishing any rhythm. Her hands stung with the sap and she had great trouble picking stems of even length. Bunching them up was even worse.

  She was so thirsty her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. How on earth was it possible to go a whole day without food or drink? It was slave labour, that’s what it was, she thought miserably. Then she noticed the pickers had water bottles in their pockets and would throw their heads back at intervals to drink.

  Jason walked back along the row and offered her a drink from his bottle.

  ‘People don’t drink more’ an they need for obvious reasons. It’s over there if you need it.’ He pointed to a corner of the field which held a small blue mobile loo. ‘It’s time lost.’ He looked down at her little heap of daffodils.

  ‘You are not doing bad. Keep at it.’

  The day stretched into eternity, punctured by the wind and the murmur of odd snatches of conversation or ribald teasing. Gabby could not feel her feet or her hands; her back felt it was going to break in half and she wanted to howl her misery into the wind. And this was only the first day.

  Then, as if by some silent, magical signal the pickers stopped as one and began to leave the field, carrying their last bunches of daffodils to the wagons. Each bunch was counted by one of four men. The farmer’s wife who had given Gabby coffee sat at the wheel of one wagon, ready to drive them to the road. Embarrassed, Gabby clutched her miserable bundles and queued like the rest.

  ‘No good. No good. OK. No good. OK, OK, OK. No good …’ the man at the trailer chanted when Gabby placed her bunches before him. Twenty bunches OK, five substandards. Ten pounds ten. Seven-thirty tomorrow.’

  Four pounds fifty! For a whole day’s work! Gabby shook with tiredness.

  ‘You’ll do better tomorrow,’ Jason said, appearing suddenly by her side.

  ‘No she won’t!’ a woman behind her cackled with scorn. ‘You can smell ’em a mile off. One-dayers. She won’t be back, will you dearie? Look, she’s nearly in tears! She’ll run back to daddy as fast as her legs will carry her …’

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ Jason said abruptly, and swung Gabby up into the trailer taking them to the bus.

  ‘Ooooh!’ There was a chorus of laughter. ‘Jason’s in love, Jason’s in love!’

  Gabby could feel her face burning. She just wanted a hole to open up so she could disappear into it.

  Jason said quickly, his own fac
e red, ‘Don’t let them get to you, or they won’t stop. Ignore them.’

  Holding on to the edge of the trailer Gabby shook with exhaustion.

  The bus was waiting at the top of the lane. The farmer’s wife smiled at her.

  ‘Well done,’ she said kindly.

  Gabby fell in the door of the bed and breakfast with only one thought: bed. She was even too tired to be hungry any more. Olive, the landlady, came out of the kitchen when she heard her.

  ‘Look at the state of you, my bird!’ she exclaimed. ‘Get in my warm kitchen and I’ll make you a brew.’

  She sat Gabby down and put a mug of steaming tea laced with sugar before her, and then she turned to the stove and began to fry eggs and bacon and sausage. As soon as Gabby smelt the food she realized she was starving.

  ‘Get that down you!’ the landlady ordered.

  ‘But,’ Gabby started to say, ‘I can’t …’

  ‘Hush your noise and eat. I don’t want paying for a bit of eggs and bacon, for heaven’s sake. I know what picking daffs is like, believe you me …’

  She paused and watched Gabby eat. The girl was small with a thin childlike body encased in mud-splattered jeans. She said quietly, ‘I’ve just got one thing to ask you. Do your parents know where you are? Sorry, my bird, but I don’t believe you’re nineteen. I’ve had daughters myself. I think you’re still at school. Am I right?’

  Gabby nodded. This adventure was not turning out to be fun. The thought of another long day picking was a nightmare. Gabby wished she had thought of anything but daffodil picking. When she had finished eating the woman brought the phone over to the table.

  ‘Ring your parents. Whatever you think, they’ll be worried sick.’

  Gabby felt dismay. Her hands on the white cloth were stained and they stung. She stared at them. She couldn’t, wouldn’t go home.

  For a moment Gabby did not move, then she pulled the phone towards her.

  OK, if it makes Olive feel better.

  She dialled. It rang for a long time. Relieved, she was about to put it down when a man answered. There was laughter and music in the background.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ the man said when Gabby asked for Clara.

  Gabby could feel Olive watching her. Pride and shame pricked her eyes, made her suddenly hot and flushed in the close room.

  Please, God, don’t let her be …

  ‘Gabby? Where the hell are you?’ The voice was thick and slurred.

  ‘Did you get my note?’

  ‘What note? What did it say?’

  ‘It said I was going to Penzance. I left it in the kitchen.’

  ‘Penzance? What the hell are you playing at?’ Clara’s voice was rising. She had obviously not sobered up enough to even realize Gabby had gone.

  ‘I was just ringing in case you were worried … to tell you I’m in Penzance,’ Gabby said in a slow false voice for Olive’s benefit. She could hear people calling her mother. She could hear the music getting louder, hear the raucous laughter. She could picture the scene exactly. She had lived it a thousand times. This was the end of lunchtime drinking. The evening for Clara had not even begun. Gabby waited. Clara laughed, called out to someone and put the phone down on Gabby. Gabby hesitated then carefully replaced the phone in its cradle. She would rather be in this shabby kitchen – safe – than in her room which she had to lock each night.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said, refusing to meet the woman’s eyes. ‘It’s cool.’

  The woman got up, touched Gabrielle’s shoulder gently and began to clear their plates away.

  ‘Go and have a bath, the water’s hot. It will warm you up. If you want to come back down and watch the telly, feel free, dear, I’m on my own tonight.’

  In bed, in the dark, Gabby thought, The first day is always the worst … It may be warmer tomorrow. I’ll get used to it. Or I’ll look for something else. I’m not going home. I’m never going back. Nobody will ever do that to me again. Nobody is going to touch me with their drunken, filthy fingers ever, ever again. I’d rather be in the daffodil fields.

  She thought of her friend Amanda, the only person who had suspected something.

  ‘You can’t give up your exams, Gabby, this is going to affect the rest of your life. What’s happened? What’s made it worse at home? You’ve only got one year to go, then you are free of your mum and you can go to uni.’

  Gabby had been silent. A year was too long. It was not something she was going to talk about to anyone.

  She moved down in the bed and tried to sleep. Her back ached and the sap had brought a rash out on her hands making them itch.

  Downstairs in her faded kitchen, Olive Trelaw hesitated over the telephone and then pressed redial. Was she meddling or just being protective of that small, thin, sad-eyed little thing? A woman answered. There was a lot of noise in the background and Olive wondered if it was a pub. Clara’s voice was slurred and when Olive said, ‘I am sure you must be worried about your daughter,’ the woman became offensive. Olive put the phone down.

  An almost forgotten, bitter anger rose up in her. She had had a daughter she loved and that daughter had been snatched away in a random single act of violence. How could this drunken woman take her child for granted? How could she not care? How dare she get drunk and abandon a vulnerable teenager to this dangerous, uncertain world? If children could not be protected by their parents, who could they trust?

  She would never forget the look in the girl’s eyes earlier as she had replaced the phone. She had wanted to gather her up and tell her to stay here with her; she would look after her. But she couldn’t. Just because she’d lost her own child it didn’t give her the right to interfere in lives she knew nothing about. All she could do was keep an eye. That was all she was entitled to do. The girl reminded her of a deer – startle her and she would be off and over the horizon.

  Gabby woke at six, bleary-eyed. She dressed quickly and crept downstairs. On the hall table she found a little worker’s bag containing a flask and sandwiches with her name on it.

  Gabby stared at it, tears of gratitude welling up in her eyes. As she ran for the bus station a small, warm place opened up inside her. It had been so long since anyone had done an intuitive and kind thing for her.

  ‘Olive Trelaw was my first friend in Cornwall,’ Gabby murmured into Mark’s shoulder. ‘She eventually contacted social services and became my guardian. I went to a sixth-form college in Penzance after Easter, when the daffodils were finished.’

  ‘You went on daffodil picking? Brave little thing you must have been.’

  ‘Not really. Nell took me into the barn to help her sort out the bunches; much easier.

  ‘Nell was my second friend. Eventually, Olive became Josh’s godmother and Nell became my mother-in-law. I never, ever went home.’

  ‘And Charlie?’ Mark asked softly. ‘Where does Charlie come in?’

  ‘He came back to the farm that Easter from agricultural college, that’s how I met Charlie.’

  ‘Fate, then? A third friend.’

  Gabby was very still. Did a twenty-two-year-old boy suddenly pushing and rushing you into the hay barn on the way back from the pub count as a friend? But he had married her. He’d done that without any hesitation. That had been an honourable thing to do.

  Gabby shivered violently with that familiar sense of betrayal. She had thought Charlie must be safe. Kind, like Nell. She had thought Charlie liked her, really liked her. He had said nice things, picked her out to talk to when he arrived home. She had almost glowed in the dark from the attention.

  Then, all of a sudden, without any words at all, there she was on her back in the scratchy hay while he pulled at her knickers. He wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t make him stop or hear her small, frantic cries.

  He hurt her, and in the end she lay quite still. At home she had known who the enemy was and fought hard. It was a lesson too late to realize that an enemy comes in many guises. He had driven her home, back to Olive’s, without one word. Olive gave he
r hot sweet tea and held her as she wept, put her to bed and then they talked and talked and decided to put it behind them, because of Nell.

  Gabby had gone back to college, but not for long. Olive, white with fury, had then marched over to see Nell. Charlie was sorry. He had been very drunk and was truly mortified and ashamed. He had tried to make it right.

  These things she did not say to Mark, but he watched the memory of them play across her face, caught her sadness.

  He said, softly, ‘I love you, Gabby.’

  Gabby swallowed, raised her head to him. He had never spoken of love before. She said abruptly, holding his hand against her face, ‘Olive died of stomach cancer when Josh was sixteen. An awful death, Mark. She deserved a better life. She gathered in waifs and strays and I loved her dearly. You should have seen the church at her funeral. It was packed, people had to stand out in the street … Oh, God, why am I telling you this? I never cry.’ She sat up crossly.

  Mark said quietly into the dark, ‘Everyone cries, Gabby, if they are human.’

  He was aware that what Gabby did not tell him was as important as the small pieces of her life he was allowed to glimpse.

  Gabby turned her face to him. ‘I am so afraid that you will go on a trip to see your family and they will reclaim you. You will never come back. It will be as if you have never been and I don’t know how I will bear it.’

  Mark, laughing softly, reached for her. ‘I just told you I love you, Gabriella Ellis. Perhaps you didn’t hear me?’

  Gabby put her fingers over his mouth. ‘I heard you,’ she said fiercely. ‘I was afraid of acknowledging your words in case a jealous God was looking down.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Thank you for telling me.’

  Gabby giggled. ‘I love you more than I have ever loved anyone, Mark Hannah.’

  Mark was silent and then he said lightly, for although he did not believe in jealous gods he did not want to test fate too far, ‘Apart from Josh and Charlie and Nell, of course!’

  ‘You know what I mean.’