Chapter Three
lan Tewkes was not the only one with plans in mind. Expansion was in the air. Gresham Reed, he of ‘Chunky Chicken Chops’ – CKC for YOU!! for ME!! (the K gave a more dramatic ring to the slogan than a third C) – had enriching schemes very much afoot. All was to go for. But he wanted, for that, land. Cheap land. The Lancashire set up was doing fine, very fine. As a result he wanted to spread. But not up there. What space as might suit was over-expensive. By far. Yet grow he must to meet growing demand. An increasingly politically-aware demand. Mouths wanted his wondrous nuggets, but only if they were not imported. Dead chickens mustn’t fly carbon miles. There was a greater emphasis on ‘green produce’, even when buying the produce of battery hens. It was getting harder to hide foreign outsourcing, to pass it off as ‘home grown’. Hiding behind an EU label was becoming non-U. So, the need to build extra. At home. For this he needed less pricey land, and a meeting with Jeremy Tewkes in the estate agent’s branch in Blakton had raised his hopes of a development in that district. Reed was on a national prowl, spying out the prospects. Where he could, he avoided the big town offices. There was more chance of getting that extra background information from juniors. Jeremy had struck him as one who could be influenced. One who would turn out to be informative, not to say chatty. Not finding his Shangri-la elsewhere, Reed had paid a return visit, to find that Jeremy had left the business. He had ‘asked around’ and, that done, invited himself to Wickton. On arrival, it was not to the long room with the Jacobean, or somesuch, fire place that he was escorted, but to a snuggy sort of semi-library. Its main attributes, to the eye of a first-time visitor, were its comfortable chairs and its well-stocked drinks cabinet.
Jeremy had almost forgotten the man. He vaguely remembered a shortish, sharp-suited, go-getting sort of potential client. The memory was fast fading. His new life was rapidly taking over and driving the time as a galley slave from his mind. When the request for a meeting came he strove to recall the circumstances. What he conjured up pleased him.
Reed had appeared in the office one especially dismal afternoon when things had been glum. Jeremy’s father seemed to be on the path to recovery. Certainly in remission. This was not as foretold. Could delay plans! Then, his boss agent had called in to declaim that he was not best pleased with the way his underling had handled – mishandled in the big man’s opinion – the sale, or failure to sell, a particularly decrepit set of outbuildings, remote from the farm and put up for separate sale. The farm house itself had been acquired for brand-new luxury flats.
“That was the whole purpose of the split,” he had hurled at the unfazed and somewhat bored Jeremy. “The whole point, man! Get the max for the farmhouse plot and leave any far barns and so on out of the deal. Then, when all is settled, mine them for conversion by some super-rich Charlie from the smoke who wants to spend his latest fab bonus on a country funk hole for the wife and kids,”
“To escape nuclear war?” Jeremy had enquired with hint of a sneer. But only the merest of hints. He was not quite that confident of his ground. If father was going to hang on then he needed to hang on here. ‘Dammit!’ though he accepted that the job was as pleasant a way to raise some pocket money, and provide opportunity to poke one’s nose into local affairs, as he was likely to find anywhere handy to Wickton.
“Terrorists” was the snap answer, “and, at the same time, to get back to communing with their fanciful images of a truly rural past.”
Jeremy knew full well that was the trick, but gave the surprised-innocent stare. Inwardly, he was gloating at his ‘failure’. It meant that the rusting tin roofs, and the rotting walls that held them, were still there. If he could only keep others hands off them until he got the inheritance! Surely the doctor had said…
His musings had been broken at that stage by the departure of the top man and the arrival of, who turned out to be, Mr Chicken Chunks himself. Not that Jeremy knew that then. Second-rate salesman or not, his nose for business, business of advantage to him, was as sharp as his father’s had ever been. He didn’t have quite the old man’s fierce drive for survival by success, not needing it to prosper, but his business acumen was well honed. He soon saw that this man was money and, moreover, one whose interest lay in unfashionable acres. They talked needs and availability. As they did so, Jeremy’s approach became that of the owner of the Agency himself. For where Reed’s eye was falling contained those very unsold out-buildings. Ones, unbeknown to his master, he wanted for himself. If he couldn’t get the barns at once, as he wanted to, badly, then could he find a way in, so that his father knew nothing, by a partnership with this guy? Jeremy’s interest in them was where they lay. As it was in stopping the folly of his father in wanting rid of them. Those old buildings were on what was to be his curtilage. The one thing he had learned in his years of estate selling servitude was that whenever you could you snapped up property on your own curtilage or, in this case, hang on to it. Always.
He had turned on the charm and tuned up his brain as it became clear that Reed was no rural idyll funk-hole hunter. Industrial land was a different, and far more flexible, matter. So long as he could secure his house from the intrusion of flats, what happened to the bulk of the land, given an in-built cordon sanitaire, would not concern him. Battery hens? Fine by him. He had given Reed his card, and a hint of profitable co-operpaation behind the scenes over acquiring the wasted fields. The Chicken King had then gone off to view other parts of the United Kingdom, and to mull over who was trying to influence whom, and why. Not long after old Mortlemann’s death – as, happily for Jeremy, duly followed as foretold, for where was the point in hanging on once the end had been declared? – he had reappeared for that second look, and traced his erstwhile contact to his newly acquired estate. For Jeremy, who then issued the invite to visit, nothing had changed. The rotting barns, served by no road, were still there. And now his. He saw a way of securing his home from oikish intrusion, and at some profit, if Reed wanted the acres badly enough. His father had wanted shot of them. He wanted to keep control. Make sure of an unsullied area surrounding Wickton before his last filial duty, to complete the old man’s sale. It had been one of his father’s ‘consolidation’ schemes. One which his heir was keen to frustrate.
Mortlemann had died leaving his consolidation plans unfinished, to his eldest son’s relief. The land remained unsold. But, irony of bloody ironies, as he had to tell Reed over a generous whisky – well, influence was the name of the game – it had been willed to Alan. That he had not foreseen – it had not been foretold. Even so, he told Reed, again that word ‘influence’. He felt sure pressure could be brought to bear on his brother, if only by using the ‘father’s last wish’ ploy. He could stretch the definition; their father had planned to sell. It was their duty as sons to do so now. That done, battery hens, out of sight and out of mind, he could accept. Along with the money that the land they would be on would bring him. All as it should be. What of Alan’s plans, already bubbling up by the time of this second meeting? They had to be stopped. Heavens, a flamingo house, the boy had talked of! Just over his garden fence! Jeremy could indeed be obsessive. He saw the threat to his new near-perfect life. Birds, very near to Marcia’s drawing room windows! Marcia could be difficult over such things. Noise, smell and, most of all, people. People. Kids, twitchers, whatever. There they would come, day after day, all year long with not even a break for Christmas. ‘The birds have to be fed every day, and the winter is the best time of the year in this sort of business because numbers peak’ his sibling had enthusiastically explained when he had for the first time let his older brother in on the extent of his proposals.
The two men mulled over the implications of possible ownership. Jeremy did not mention his personal reactions and reasons; his line was one of a partner-in-business. If Reed had the money, he had the land. Or would have!
“How do you propose getting control of the ground if the appeal to your duty to father’s ghost fails? Contest the Will?”
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p; “Doubt if it would work.” Jeremy looked moodily into his glass. He didn’t suppose their late father’s wish, even if presented as a dying one which, by mournful speech he would try to present it as, would be enough to outweigh Alan’s love of living birds. “Might be worth a first look, at the Will, but not at the risk of a lot of lawyer’s fees. No. I think the second line of approach, if the duty-to-sell one fails, is one of jobs for a comparatively deprived area. Bring new life and prosperity to the district. A planning application from you, a national employer figure, would not be without support. The landlord of The Bell for one, and the village shopkeeper. And their customers, should they hint they might have to close their businesses should it fail. Quite a body could build up.”
“I’ll need to own the land first. Will your brother play ball in the face of public opinion? From what you’ve told me, I can’t see great hope. Yet, it wouldn’t spoil all his plans would it? A bit of coming and going, of course, but it’s all birds in a way.”
“Not that he’s likely to agree to that!” was Jeremy’s dry reply. “Somehow, we’ve got to get the pressure on him from a wider community. Jobs again. That’s the new line. Jobs and, if it can be done, some ecological gimmick to back it up. You couldn’t work with free-range hens I suppose?”
Gresham Reed’s look answered that one. The two continued to wear their thinking caps, thoughts being stimulated by re-charged glasses. Jeremy found himself being ever more drawn into the business orbit of his guest. He felt entitled. So it should be! His well-deserved return for his time in that Blakton office. He reviewed his looked-for gains: to secure his privacy, to restrict if not stop his brother’s scheme, and to pocket some well-deserved cash as a bonus. There remained just that little difficulty of land ownership.
With Reed departed to await developments, not before having issued a stern time-bar warning – he wasn’t going to be kept dangling by this upstart yokel – Jeremy began to review his options. Time was of the essence to him also. One might be to involve his sister Galina. Alan was moving ahead quickly. The public meeting that Councillor Mrs Antonia White had not been able to attend had been followed by others ever more supportive in tone. Jeremy began to sense that his brother must have known all along that the land was going to be his. If so, why had his father decided to sell off those very fields and the old farm which, once upon a heyday, had fed the ducal hordes? Had he, too, wanted to keep the hoi polloi at a distance, half-guessing what was in Alan’s mind? If so, then filial duty doubly bound him to complete, in a way more suitable to himself, his father’s planned consolidation. But how? But how? His brain whizzed around, and he wound it up to near the point of frenzy with Marcia as the days passed. She would have cried out to him to ‘give it a rest’ had she not seen in her mind’s eye what she might be seeing through her drawing room windows. So she went along with him, and being sharp and keen, added her views and her intellect to the search for a plan.
“Are you absolutely sure that all the land – all of it – is truly Alan’s? You didn’t query any part of the Will when we all heard it from Macintosh.” The Tewkeses had liked Thornley but kept their affairs in the hands of quite different solicitors. Macintosh sounded as Scottish as he wasn’t, being pure Devon by five generations ‘at least’ as he had told them. Fortunately for the status of the law, he looked reassuringly Celtic. Wise if wordy.
“As I said to Reed, I’m sure enough. It might be worth looking into, but only briefly. I would regret the cost and, even more, the time it took. Alan’s already building on the natural bird population and openly planning all sorts of works. Raised money on the strength of the land as collateral. The bank must be sure enough of his ownership.”
“Your father wanted part of it sold.”
“It would have been sold by now if the Agent hadn’t been so greedy. It would have gone as one lot with the old farm house.” Jeremy didn’t blush. “Alan’s lost that bit, but its the part of least concern to him, being virtually in the village. The rest is adjacent to his reed beds. What he wants.”
“Have you spoken to him at all?”
“Not about this. Or about Gresham. It wouldn’t do any good. He’s fixed on realising his dream, as he calls it, and gets further involved, and raises further support and publicity, every day.”
“Aren’t there legal grounds to revert to your father’s wish, more than wish, his action, his decision, in putting that ground on the market? You can still get a copy of the prospectus that your firm published, surely?”
“Surely. That’s no problem. But the old man’s dead and the land isn’t sold and the land is Alan’s. Stalemate.”
Marcia marshalled her forces. She had involved herself in the local Women’s Institute, not because she was by nature a friendly WI type, but as the coming lady of the ducal manor she decided that she would have a role to play. It was, also, a way to replace Jeremy’s estate agency office side-line, to find out more about what was going on. And what people thought. In her way she could rival Antonia White.
“What about this?”
Her husband looked up. There was a fresh tone in her voice, sharper than the more sombre style they had been using as their conversations had gone round and round the houses. Or, rather, the land.
“What was that you told me about the idea of some ecological case for selling the land?”
“Oh that! I merely put it to Reed that, in support of the jobs-for-the-people case, if we could add on something or other in tune with the organic greenery thinking of the day, I part joke, we might devise a winning case. That and the proof that father had put the piece up for sale and was merely waiting a buyer. It was never, we can strongly argue, his intention that that area should go with the riverside stretch to Alan. That’s all. A supporting argument. Got one?”
“I just might have.” Jeremy was all attention now. He waited. He knew Marcia could be awkward but never frivolous.
“Something I learned at a WI meeting recently. And no jokes about how to make cakes!” Jeremy had had no intention of interrupting with a pleasantry, however apposite.
“We had a speaker from the Countryside Council body the other week. Talking about the history of thatching. You know the sort of cottage he was describing very well. You helped sell enough of them in your time. Well, he was saying how sad it was that the old skills of using natural resources to, among other things, roof our houses, were disappearing. He waxed mightily about the virtues of the green goodness of ecological construction. Not quite back to mud-and-wattle huts, but certainly to expanding the use of natural materials in the area to which they are indigenous.”
“And?” Her husband was fully engaged by now.
“And, there is a scheme afoot, with much government and council blessings and money, to manage reed beds, and I’m sure this is what he said, to promote and support traditional and local sustainable industries. Wonderful phrase. He used it more than once. Managing reed beds for the greater good of the community. Providing jobs, thatching houses, providing fuel and, if I recall aright, and I swear I do, helping nature conservation. I didn’t grasp in what way, but that’s beside the point. Now, wouldn’t an approach on those lines spike your Alan’s guns!”
Jeremy sat back in some amazement as the prospect of out-conserving his pompous younger brother dawned. Oh what joy that would give! Publicise that the land, sold to Reed – by him, of course, somehow, with the help of Macintosh and those old sales prospectuses prepared for his father – would be altogether better used, and of enormously greater value to all and sundry, by building the entrepreneur’s chicken houses and harvesting his reed beds. Wonderful!
For a while they sat in silent admiration of each other. Despite that silence, still, they missed a sound through the sitting room window quite unlike that of the yobs, the mess or the attracted admass that they so dreaded. High in the sky, turning as one as they approached the salt lakes, a squadron of geese, necks outstretched and with harmonious honks, cut through the air with a show of the purpose that wo
uld soon see them off on their three thousand mile safari back to north Russia. A fleeting glimpse of aerial beauty, lost on the two contemplating instead the mileage to be got out of getting behind a conservation schema. Silent they sat as they let the birds go, unnoticed, by their window on the way in to touch down in splashing array.
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