These were the visitors he had been so certain would come. Recently he’d banished the thought of them in light of more pressing concerns, but they were here now, of that he was certain.
The first car, a shining black Range Rover, glinted in the sunlight as it pulled forward. The second car, a similarly sized vehicle, followed so closely in the wake of the first that Doubler couldn’t have read the number plate if he had tried. Together, as though joined, the cars snaked up towards Doubler. He held his breath, and his organs and senses responded by shifting within him. His heartbeat thudded in his ears, his hollow chest banged painfully in his stomach, and the adrenaline that had replaced his blood now coursed through his veins, but his knees trembled so violently the flight his brain screamed for was foiled.
As he lowered his binoculars, a wren flitted past the window; its unmistakable flicker at ground level caught his eye. He drew himself upright and left the safety of the sitting room to meet his foe face to face. He thought about collecting his shotgun on the way, but that would have meant unlocking the great sheds, and those he definitely wanted to remain closed to prying eyes.
It was after eleven o’clock and there was already as much heat in the sun as the day was going to muster. Doubler took strength from the minimal warmth and tilted his face upwards to breathe it in, inhaling deeply to calm his nerves. He walked round to the front of the house and planted his feet as firmly as he could while he awaited the arrival of his visitors. The pose he aimed to effect was that of a man with a shotgun readily available.
The black cars snarled round the final corner and slunk into the yard, coming to a stop only a couple of metres from Doubler. The heavy doors swung open, claiming their right to dominate in a world full of thinner, tinnier car doors. Each assertive clunk was accompanied by a cacophony of beeps and flashing lights. Instructions to their witless drivers? Doubler wondered.
Peele was the first to slither from his vehicle. As he rounded the car, Doubler assessed him. The visitor appeared to be wearing an undertaker’s coat, and the dark tie he wore added to the sombre image. Doubler steadied his breathing as best he could, but the portentous imagery seemed deliberately threatening.
‘Doubler? I’m Peele. Legion Peele, your neighbour.’
The second visitor, a smaller version of Peele, had joined them and now slotted into place beside his boss but merely nodded. This gentleman didn’t need to be introduced apparently, as if he existed solely as an adjunct to Peele himself.
‘I know who you are, Peele. I’ve been up at this farm the best part of forty years. You get to know the comings and goings of your neighbours.’
‘I can imagine. This is quite a vantage point you have up here.’ Peele looked around him appreciatively, his eyes appearing to flick about like those of a tailor measuring a bespoke suit.
The nebulous man next to Peele barely moved his eyes away from Doubler.
Doubler felt strength in Peele’s overt admiration of his farmstead and this manifested in a flush of defiant confidence. ‘I don’t believe I’ve seen you about,’ Doubler said, forcing the second man to meet his gaze. The rigidity of the ground beneath Doubler, the weight that held Mirth Farm aloft, seemed to seep fortitude through the soles of Doubler’s feet. He wriggled his toes in his wellington boots to anchor his feet more firmly still. He held his hand out, forcing Peele’s companion to break ranks and step forward.
‘Jones,’ said the man, but he gave Doubler nothing more. He was clearly a cipher in his own mind, too.
‘You’ve received my letters, I hope?’ said Peele, once Jones had stepped back to resume his subordinate place.
‘Yes, indeed. Three of them.’
‘It’s normal practice to respond to communication, Doubler.’
‘But not obligatory. I didn’t have much to say, and nor did I invite the communication in the first place.’
‘I made a very generous offer to purchase your farm. It sits right in the middle of my land and I don’t like unfinished business. I don’t think I can make it much clearer to you, Doubler: I’d like to buy this place.’
Doubler remained standing, grateful that his knees had not yet let him down.
Peele pressed on. ‘The offer carries an excessive premium. You won’t get another like it.’
‘I don’t need another offer. Mirth Farm is not for sale.’
‘Everything has a price.’
Doubler considered this seriously, looking beyond Peele, towards the magnificent view. ‘Not everything. I can think of a number of things that can’t be purchased. A sunset, a cooling breeze, the beat of a skein of geese as they pass low over the brow of this hill.’
Peele looked impatient for the first time, though his eyes remained devoid of light whether he smiled or frowned. Doubler was unperturbed and prepared to continue with his list.
‘Good health. That has no price. Money may improve your odds, I suppose, but you can’t buy a life free from illness.’
‘That’s very true, and a good reminder that you’re getting on, Doubler, and who knows what the years ahead will spring on you. You’ve done a great job managing as you do up here, but this farm is going to be too much to handle soon. You’d be far better off taking my offer and settling down to a more comfortable retirement. Accepting my offer will make you a wealthy man.’
Doubler frowned and looked at Peele closely. ‘You sound just like my son. He said the same thing, word for word.’
‘Julian? He’s a sensible young man. We are members of the same golf club and see eye to eye on a number of matters. He’s going to go far, that one. But I can’t see him following in your footsteps. He’s not a potato man like you and I.’
Doubler, who had been standing stock-still, as if on guard, allowed his shoulders to drop a fraction as he reassessed Peele. Was it possible that he and this man had something in common? Was it possible that they were different iterations of the same thing, united by a shared passion? It was as statistically likely, he supposed, as he and his son having nothing in common despite their shared DNA.
‘He most certainly isn’t. You consider yourself a potato man, do you?’ Doubler scanned Peele for traces of earth in his fingernails or on his shoes or trouser cuffs but found none.
Peele interpreted the appraisal. ‘I might not look like you, and my farming methods may be very different, but we are the same. We are both after exactly the same thing. Excellence in our field. From what I hear, there’s no doubt that you are an expert – perhaps world class, I’m told. I might have more land than you, and I expect my yields are higher, but I have no doubt that you’re the superior technician. I’m sure there is a great deal you could teach me.’
Doubler puffed up a little. The knowledge that somewhere in the valley below people might be discussing him and referring to him as a world-class expert filled him with pride. Peele recognized the shift and seized the opportunity.
‘May I come in and talk to you?’ Peele hesitated. ‘Privately.’ Peele gestured to Jones with an almost imperceptible tilt of his head and the henchman turned to go and sit in his car. Doubler was impressed by Peele’s control of the man and found himself using a similarly low-key gesture to beckon Peele as he led him to his kitchen.
‘What a kitchen!’ Peele said, looking around at the ancient fittings. ‘It’s a museum piece.’
The comment was devoid of praise, but Doubler mistook the incredulity for admiration.
‘Thank you. It’s all pretty much as it would have been when it was originally built, but it’s a living house, Mr Peele, not a museum. It functions admirably and rarely lets me down.’
‘Please, call me Legion.’
‘It’s an unusual name. I’ve never met another. A family name, is it? Sit down, Legion. I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘It was my grandfather’s name. Quite rare, yes, but it’s probably not as unusual as Doubler.’
‘That’s not my given name – it’s one I picked up along the way.’
‘A potato reference, I
assume?’
Doubler shrugged. He felt Peele’s eyes on him as he filled the old tin kettle at the tap and lifted the ancient copper lid of the Aga. A splash of water landed on the hotplate and sizzled in a frenzied burst of steam and Doubler felt proud of all of it: the house, its view, the kitchen and the Aga that only he really understood.
Doubler knew that to retain any equipoise, he would need to give the impression of a man just as busy and important as his visitor. ‘I’ve not got much time to spare – I’ve a hospital visit to make – so I’ll get on with a task or two while we talk, one potato farmer to another.’
‘Ah, you’re off to St Anne’s? Wonderful hospital. Full of admiration for the staff. My mum died there, but the nursing staff couldn’t have been kinder.’
Peele’s words jolted Doubler, who harboured a deep hope to visit Mrs Millwood but until this exchange hadn’t considered there might be a greater urgency than his own impatience. Doubler’s hand shook a little as he lifted the now-steaming kettle away to fill the pot he’d prepared. He didn’t want to contemplate the possibility of any deadline in that place.
‘It’s hard, getting on a bit,’ said Peele, from his position at the table.
Doubler assumed Peele had mistaken the shake in his hand for something degenerative and responded with affront in his voice as he set the pot and cups on the table. ‘I’ve still got my health, Mr Peele, and I expect to hang onto it for a long time yet. I’m in the fresh air most of every day, and I work as hard now as I did in my twenties. That should keep me going, though there seem no end of people who want to get shot of me.’
‘I was talking about myself, Doubler. I find it increasingly tough to cope with the change that’s essential if you want to keep on top of the latest techniques. The world moves so quickly. I can barely keep up.’
Doubler looked at his visitor, who must be younger than him by a good twenty-five or thirty years. ‘I’ve always been quite happy to let it move on without me, thanks very much.’ He took from a drawer two white tea towels and spread them on the butcher’s block. He then removed a number of heavy steel-bladed knives from the knife rack in front of him and laid them out gently on the prepared cloths.
Peele watched him carefully while he talked. ‘That’s tempting, I know, but us farmers are being systematically squeezed out. Imports are cheaper; other countries have different priorities. There was a day when all the potatoes grown here were British, but that’s not the case now. There are potatoes coming in from all over. The imports chase the price down and make it far harder for people like you and me to compete.’
Doubler appeared not to hear him but lifted from a pot of water a stone he’d left to soak. Flicking the excess water from it towards the sink, he then began to sharpen the first knife with steady, slow strokes.
Peele took a sip of his tea and continued, ‘Scale is essential – it’s the only way forward. You need to have the capacity to produce enough of your crop to influence change. You’ve got to have a sufficiently loud voice to lobby government. I spend at least a day a week in London talking to the people who can help ensure that potato farmers like us will be around to hand over a robust business to our children.’
Doubler winced, briefly interrupting his meticulous work, and Peele recognized the transparent honesty of his response. After this hesitation, Doubler resumed his knife sharpening, raising the angle of the blade back to a carefully maintained fifteen degrees.
‘Well, I suppose it’s a little different, isn’t it, if the potato line is going to end with you? If you’re not intending to pass your business on to your children, then I suppose it’s a legacy you’re looking for, rather than a viable business, is it?’ asked Peele, assessing Doubler carefully.
Doubler was uncertain if this was a rhetorical question but contemplated it seriously.
He and Mrs Millwood had often discussed his legacy. But was it because he had no great expectation for his children that he had been chasing his research so doggedly? Because he knew the line would end and wanted to leave something behind that he could be proud of?
This train of thought felt new to Doubler. He asked himself some more questions, keen to lock these into his conscious mind for thorough examination. Would most parents be satisfied simply with the continuation of their own genetic line? Could that ever be enough? What had motivated Mr Clarke? Doubler couldn’t answer this last one with any certainty, but he bet it was excellence in its own right rather than paving a path for the evolution of his own DNA. He felt impatient to ask Mrs Millwood. She would be sure to have an opinion.
‘You’re perceptive, Mr Peele. My legacy is important to me. I am motivated by the work of the great potato men who came before us, and if I can make just a fraction of the impact they had on our field, then I will die a happy man.’
‘I admire that, Doubler. That’s very refreshing, and I expect people like you are few and far between. But we are not so different. You crave some sort of recognition for your work; you’re not without ego. I too am looking to make a mark and I maintain that to be influential in our world is simply not possible without scale.’
Doubler laid the sharp knife down carefully and picked up the next, preparing to repeat the process.
Peele raised his voice a notch, tired of talking to Doubler’s back. ‘There’s a gadget for that, my friend. It’s called a knife sharpener. You could have those all done and dusted in just a few moments.’
‘Oh, I’m not averse to a modern gadget,’ Doubler said sincerely, but still with his back turned. ‘This is a modern gadget. I’ve used this one for a number of years. Before this, I’d always keep my eyes peeled for the perfect stones on the drive. They’d turn up with surprising regularity. You’d scan the same patches of ground day in, day out and then one day – hey presto! the perfect stone for sharpening. Who knows where it would have been hiding beforehand, invisible one day, in plain sight the next.’
Doubler turned round and smiled generously, but the smile didn’t quite reach Peele; it rested somewhere just behind him as if there were another person in the room.
‘I’m very much in favour of this newfangled whetstone. Very pleasing it is. But really, any stone will do. Ultimately, all you’re doing is angling the stone to remove very small particles of metal.’
‘But think of the time you could save with the electric equivalent!’ Peele insisted.
‘I don’t suppose you’d save much. I look after my knives very well, so they only need sharpening every couple of months, and each one takes just a few minutes. I probably spend – what, an hour and a half a year sharpening my knives? How much of that time is your gadget going to save me, Mr Peele, and what exactly would you have me do with the saving? Boil an egg?’ Doubler chuckled, delighted with himself and wishing Mrs Millwood could be at the table, listening in.
There was a long silence in which Doubler continued to sharpen the blade before stopping, quite suddenly, and turning to face Peele.
‘My bet,’ Doubler said boldly, ‘is that my influence will be longer-lasting than yours.’
Peele was a little taken aback but smiled politely. ‘You’re arrogant! I like that about you.’ And then he added, pointedly, ‘It means there’s a bit more to you than some have led me to believe.’
Doubler narrowed his eyes as he considered this. ‘You mean Julian.’
‘Yes, he was certainly of the opinion that you had very little ambition, but from the rumours I’ve heard, that doesn’t seem to be the case, and you’re certainly acting like a man who is pretty confident of success within his own lifetime.’
‘Julian has absolutely no idea what I’m up to here.’
‘Well, perhaps if you entrusted him with some of that knowledge, he’d be more tempted to follow in your footsteps.’
‘I don’t think he’d have the temperament. This isn’t a quick game; this is a life’s work.’
Peele was now puzzled. He was not a man to take an uncalculated risk. He had been investigating Doubler’s busin
ess for a number of years and had made his offer for the farm in the certain knowledge that he had enough on the man to use a blunter instrument if necessary.
‘Your life’s work is behind you, Doubler. You’ve proved your point, and you’ve been a true innovator, too. But it cannot continue, and why should it? There’s nothing more for you to do.’
There is plenty for me to do, thought Doubler. He mentally scanned the checklist of the ‘t’s that needed crossing, the ‘i’s that needed dotting. Above all else, he required his official validation before he could rest. How far away was that? Weeks? Months?
The waiting was tiresome, but Doubler was confident that once he’d received validation from a global authority, great commercial success would follow swiftly. Doubler had relied on Mrs Millwood to find a solution that would protect him from exploitation. He trusted Mrs Millwood. And once she’d explained to him the benefit of attaining watertight accreditation from an institution of international renown, he believed he could trust the Indians, too. Their reputation for bureaucracy and dedication to process felt reassuring to Doubler.
But now, this interloper, his competitor, was implying that he knew what Doubler was up to. All he would need to do would be to take half a sack of chitting potatoes from one of Doubler’s sheds and he could steal the advantage, steal his legacy.
‘There are no runners-up in this game – just winners and losers – and there are small-time producers like you going out of business every day.’ Peele interrupted Doubler’s thoughts, alarmed at the distance Doubler seemed to have travelled with his eyes.
Mr Doubler Begins Again Page 30