Wild Weekend

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘So if the few, the selfish few, who seek to hold on to our land when it is so desperately needed …’

  Again, like the distant roar of the sea, they were muttering out there.

  ‘… and future generations …’

  She saw the Adviser wince. Almost felt his pain over the empty spot-lit space between them. Damn, how could she have forgotten? Never, ever, talk about future generations. Nothing set the old bullshitometer off like that expression. You might as well light up a neon sign saying DANGER!! BLACKMAIL IN PROGRESS!!

  Future, yes, the future was good. Generations were the problem. The idea always landed like a sack of shit. Especially with business people who, if they had children, cut them out of the family photograph along with the first wife and consigned them to the dustbin of their personal history.

  She took her eyes off her notes and went for the look of evangelical conviction that she’d practised. ‘If we are to have a land worth living in, we must agree that it’s time to shake off sentimentality, to let go of the past, to acknowledge the economic realities of the society in which we live …’

  A clap. Clapping! Yes! There it was, the noise that made her right. Clare looked at the Adviser. He wasn’t there. Where was he? Checking the room for the press conference? ‘The new Rural Development Council …’ she began, starting down the home straight. Another clap. Another. Another. Clapping. Hell and damnation. They were slow-clapping.

  The bastards, they were giving her the slow hand-clap. The bastards.

  Only another ten lines. The Rural Development Council. Recommendations. Tangle of planning laws. Cumbersome procedures. Reclaiming our land. Unlocking our potential. Building the future. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Goodbye. They were shouting now. She couldn’t hear what. All bigotry and ignorance, anyway. We knew there would be resistance. We anticipated this. Just not so vicious. My God, there was that stab of fear, the blue-white blade of terror flickering down her throat, not felt since she was an undersized six-year-old getting shoved around the school playground. Walk quickly. Quickly. You are not going to pee your pants. Just get off the stage.

  The Adviser was there, in the shadows where the cameras couldn’t find him. ‘Don’t say it,’ she muttered as she passed on her way to the press conference. ‘I know. I wanted the public debate.’ Damn, the press conference. Now it was going to look like a heist. And all the media would talk about was the row in the hall, forget the issue, forget the strategy, focus on the row.

  The last lorry of the morning, loaded with crates of potatoes, lurched out of the yard into the lane, and the potato pickers allowed themselves a fifteen-minute break. Juri and Tolvo selected a broken crate to save their trousers from the mud, sat down back to back and lit up cigarettes.

  ‘Let’s talk about food,’ Tolvo suggested over his shoulder. ‘Anything as long as it’s not potatoes. Or cauliflowers.’

  ‘Oh, God. Those cauliflowers.’ Colin had turned his loss-making crop over to his pigs and his workers. The pigs were equipped to digest vast quantities of cellulose, the men were not. Juri especially had suffered. ‘You passed more stinking gas than a cow when we got those cauliflowers.’

  ‘I didn’t pass as much as you – you could have fuelled a power station, you were farting so much.’ Tolvo reached around and poked his friend in what was once his stomach. ‘You could have run the national grid off that little methane factory. Or sent a space probe to Saturn for twenty years.’

  ‘I thought my guts were going to split,’ Juri recalled. ‘Or maybe some alien had raped me and I was having its babies or something. God, the pain. I’ll never look at a cauliflower again. Not even pickled. Forget it.’

  ‘It was a change from the potatoes,’ Tolvo pointed out. ‘Potatoes with onions. Potatoes with greens. Potatoes with greens and onions. Potatoes with onions and greens.’

  There were sixteen men working on the farm, and one or two among them could brew up something like a meal from what the gang could scavenge – the potatoes that were still lying in the fields because they were too small to be picked up by the gathering machine, some onions found in a rotting heap in a corner of one of the barns, and what they could find that was edible in the field margins and the roadsides.

  The gang possessed a pan and a piece of pork fat that wasn’t too bad but nobody knew where it had come from. The British were apparently too lazy to pick up firewood, so they had plenty of free fuel. Spring was starting, the days were longer. In the half-hour of twilight after they finished work, Tolvo and Juri had dared to venture down the lane, looking for nettle tops, rose shoots and anything else that wasn’t actually poisonous.

  ‘I’ve been dreaming about food,’ Juri went on, taking the very last drag on the very last millimetre of his cigarette. ‘Forget women. I can’t think about women. If I got a stiffie in this state, I’d probably think it was a sausage and cut it off and fry it or something.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re giving up on women,’ Tolvo said.

  ‘It’s true. If Britney Spears walked into this yard right now, stark naked, and said, “Come on Juri, come here and fuck me, fuck me till my tits drop off,” all I’d be able to think about is what she’d taste like roasted with cream and mushroom sauce. All I ever dream about now is food. Last night, I was dreaming about cucumbers.’

  ‘I heard that about you,’ Tolvo said. ‘They said on the handball team you had a thing for cucumbers.’

  ‘I tell you,’ Juri assured him with a sober face. ‘The way I feel right now, your ridiculous handball team could have their way with me all night with all the vegetables of their choice if I got a cucumber of my own to take home at the end. I’d slice it very thin and do it with dill and vinegar, Hungarian-style. And cream. Loads of cream. Cream as thick as axle grease. Lovely.’

  ‘My grandmother,’ Tolvo began, ‘used to make these little pastries with cream cheese. They were all buttery and crisp on the bottom, and the tops stood up like little pig’s ears and they were so thin you could see the light right through them, and when you took a bite they just melted in your mouth. She made them for birthdays and saints’days and stuff. When she could get the butter. And she mixed the cheese with spice and raisins, when she got some raisins.’

  His stomach rumbled at the memory and they both laughed. ‘Britney Spears would taste like pork chops,’ Juri declared, stretching out his legs. ‘All sweet and pink and juicy.’

  ‘And J-Lo would taste like steak. Oh God. Imagine that bum in lovely slices, just fried a little, with maybe a tomato sauce.’

  ‘Oh God, tomato sauce! Tomatoes, even. I think I’ll die of joy when I see a tomato again. What about Christina Aguilera?’

  ‘Chicken,’ Tolvo suggested. ‘Actually, not such a good chicken, I don’t think. She looks a bit stringy. Not much fat under the skin. You can have Christina Aguilera and Britney, if I can have J-Lo.’

  ‘OK,’ Juri agreed. ‘I just love chicken fat. Just by itself, Polish-style. With just a little sprinkle of salt. There are chickens somewhere round here, I’ve heard them.’

  ‘Yeah, but if we steal one everyone’ll know who did it, won’t they? People don’t steal food in England because everybody’s too rich, so they’d know it was us. And then their cops would be on to us and that’d be it, game over, everybody goes to jail and we’ll lose all our money. Same with the pigs. They’ve all got tags in their ears, they’d know if they lost a little porker and we’d all be stuffed.’

  ‘We could buy a chicken, maybe.’ Juri’s voice was wistful. ‘Just once. If we went into that village.’

  ‘We’re not allowed off the farm. We’re illegals, remember?’

  ‘Yeah, but everybody knows we’re here. You know, when someone comes by on the road, like that woman on a horse the other day, who waved to us? They’re all quite friendly. They know who we are, and what we’re doing here and they don’t care. Come on, Tolvo. Be a man for once. Let’s go into that village and buy a chicken. Buy anything. I’m going to die here in this d
isgusting freezing English mud if I don’t eat something like real food.’

  Tolvo frowned. He had moral obligations. Juri spoke no English, so he would have to do the talking. Juri’s contact had got him the job. And when people passed them on the road in the evening, it was true, they smiled and waved. Or at least they just looked. They weren’t hostile, anyway. And chicken was his favourite thing to eat in all the world, next to the cheese pastries.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You’re on. Saturday. Maybe they’ll let us off early if we say we’ll do an extra half-hour tonight.’

  ‘My best mate,’ said Juri, weighing down on him from behind with a hug that was more like a garrotte. ‘I knew you’d be up for it. Cock-a-doodle-doo! Chicken dinner here we come. I want the parson’s nose.’

  ‘You two!’ yelled the foreman from the doorway to the barn. ‘Stop arsing around. Get over here, get back to work.’

  They scrambled up and ran to the shed so eagerly that he turned to watch them with a suspicious frown. They looked too cheerful to be innocent. OK, they were good lads who worked well, but nobody actually liked this job.

  ‘You know what,’ said Tolvo, taking his place by the belt as the machinery started and the first kilos of spuds rumbled down the ramp.

  ‘What?’ Juri worked opposite him. They had found out the hard way that if they bent for the same potato at the same time, they cracked their heads together.

  ‘When we get back home, we could set up a website for people with fantasies about eating pop stars. We could get some clever animations guy to maybe doctor a few pictures, and people could just post their fantasies and share them. Call it “Eating Pussy”. We’d get thousands of hits just from people looking for porno who’d made a mistake.’

  Juri wasn’t really listening. He never really listened to anything about computers or anything about business. Tolvo loved Juri but if he didn’t wake up he’d probably still be picking potatoes in ten years’time.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, grabbing at the passing spuds with both hands and clawing them into the crate in front of him. ‘You know what? I think I’ll pass on Christina Aguilera. She would be too stringy. I’ll take Buffy instead. There’s a lot more meat on her.’

  ‘OK,’ Tolvo agreed. ‘I think she’d be kinda tough, with all that kicking and martial arts and stuff. You can have Buffy.’

  ‘With mushrooms, don’t you think? Do they have mushrooms in England? How come we never see any?’

  ‘Come on, Juri, stop daydreaming, look a bit keen, can’t you? We won’t get half an hour off if we’ve spent the whole afternoon loafing.’

  ‘God, I love bread. Fresh white bread when it’s still warm and the crust cracks when you break it …’

  A little earlier that day, Oliver and his mother entered The Pigeon & Pipkin, where Bel’s courage was further challenged by the discovery of Toni and some black-clad friends at the bar.

  ‘Oh, Gawd.’ Toni swivelled her mascara-crusted eyes ceilingwards to indicate her despair. ‘Can’t I get any peace around here?’

  For the benefit of the friends a girl in slashed PVC and two boys in Lycra dishcloths – she let the question come out as: carneyegerranypissrahnere?

  ‘You can’t be drunk already,’ said Bel, crisp and accurate for once.

  ‘Nunahyerbisnesswoteyeam,’ drawled Toni.

  ‘Well, it is my business, actually,’ Bel said, raising her voice to bell-like clarity. ‘Since you are …’

  ‘Oworlride, erewego!’ Toni raised her own voice in turn, managing to drown out the words ‘only seventeen’. ‘Come on, come on. Eyenossstandinferanymoreothiz. Lessgerroutavere.’ She lurched away from the bar towards the pool room, her friends following with much jingling of chains.

  Oliver and his mother installed themselves by the fire with two plates of the dish of the day, which was Turkey Mediterrané, a sort of orange porridge with congealed lumps that were quite convincingly like meat. Since it was an emergency, Oliver also decided on a bottle of wine. The top of the cellar was a Chilean Chardonnay. In an earlier life, it might have been adequate for cleaning a bicycle chain, but in their present state of distress it was better than nothing.

  Their pleasure, such as it was, did not last long. The television in the corner, normally only switched on for football matches, suddenly flickered into life.

  ‘Huh?’ Oliver demanded of the landlord, with an expressive wave of his fork.

  ‘Colin wants it,’ the landlord explained. ‘New minister, or something.’

  ‘Agriculture minister,’ Colin explained, halting his consumption of the Turkey Mediterrané.

  ‘Got another new one,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Woman, isn’t it?’ said somebody else.

  On the screen, a presenter, a man in a suit with an artistic silk tie, was outlining the situation. ‘Clare Marlow, the CEO of Agraria, formerly known as the Ministry of Agriculture, had a hostile reception today when she addressed the Royal Conservation Society conference in London. Clare Marlow is with us in our Westminster studio …’

  A standard interval of nodding and thanking ensued. Oliver noted that the new Minister appeared to have put on a pink jacket to disguise the fact that she was one hard-eyed heartless harpy. Something about her definitely gave him the chills.

  ‘So,’ the interviewer began. ‘You’ve come from the commercial sector, Clare, the former managing director of Mutual Probity, the troubled multinational financial group. What makes you think you can do this job?’

  ‘Good question,’ Colin growled, his fork frozen in mid air with contempt.

  ‘Not Mutual Probity,’ said Oliver. ‘Not that bunch of crooks.’

  ‘She looks like the Queen Mother,’ Bel announced. ‘Wearing a brooch on her shoulder like that. And that dreadful haircut. Why do women make themselves ugly as soon as they go into politics?’

  ‘British agriculture needs strong leadership,’ Clare was heard to reply. ‘I believe in responsible land use, ethical production and global viability.’

  ‘Well don’t we all?’ growled Colin, slurping down the first third of a new pint.

  ‘And Father Christmas,’ said Oliver.

  The interviewer tried again. ‘Surely twenty years of profit-imperative thinking …’

  The CEO of Agraria cut him off immediately. ‘Land is a vital national resource and we must make sure that it is managed appropriately. Britain’s transition from a rural economy based on food production to a mixed land development situation …’

  ‘Will somebody tell me what the fuck she’s talking about?’ This was from Colin.

  ‘Selling farmland for building?’ hazarded Oliver.

  ‘… must achieve our democratic objectives. The people of Britain have got to get what they need from their land. And their greatest need is undeniably housing …’

  ‘Well I never,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘… housing that is affordable and accessible, the right home in the right place at the right price …’

  ‘What’s that got to do with farming?’ demanded Colin.

  ‘Or conservation,’ said Lucy, newly arrived with pink cheeks from fetching her horses from Jimmy’s paddock.

  ‘And the new Rural Development Council? Isn’t this just a smokescreen to hide the process of selling our farmland off to developers?’

  The new Minister knew the old trick of ignoring the question. ‘We need to address the question of how best to manage this change …’

  ‘Oh come on,’ the interviewer struggled against the rising flood of jargon. ‘Surely we need first to examine whether this change should be made at all?’

  ‘Ensuring a fair distribution of resources to all …’ Clare carried on as if he hadn’t spoken.

  ‘It’s bollocks,’ said Colin. ‘We knew it was going to be bollocks when she changed the name. It’s a done deal, they’re going to sell us off to the fat cats and the golf clubs and there’ll be damn all we can do about it. Turn her off before we all get ill.’ This was to the landlord, and seconded by angry no
ises from the bar. The TV was duly extinguished.

  Oliver reached for the wine. For the first time in his life, he didn’t want to think about the future. Especially when the present was demanding some urgent troubleshooting. He thought he had twenty pounds in his pocket, and some small change.

  His mother had been stirring her food listlessly. Oliver lowered his voice and began tiptoeing towards the topic of the bailiff, the debts and the availability of ready cash. ‘So you really are absolutely maxed out?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean, maxed out?’ Scenting some entertainment, Bel revived a little.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ her son said sternly. ‘I mean, are your credit cards all up to the limit?’

  ‘Oh dear, they’re all over their limits, I should think. I tried asking for a new one, but they won’t send it.’

  ‘Once a court issues a judgement against you, it goes on the credit control computers,’ he explained.

  ‘I do hate computers,’ she sighed. The Turkey Mediterrané tasted revolting, but it was warm and it had made her feel better. In Bel’s case, ‘better’ meant that she was falling back on her default programming, which told her that the nearest available man would soon lick the world into shape for her.

  ‘Well, I’m no saint either,’ he told her, resolutely topping up her glass with the last of the bottle. ‘I’ve borrowed every cent I can, too. It won’t help us if we’re both on credit blacklists. Just at this point in history, I can’t put my hands on five hundred pounds. I wish I could, but it can’t be done. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes, dear. I suppose I do …’ His mother, still clinging to the vision of the hero with the mighty chequebook who was waiting in the wings to leap to her rescue, twinkled her eyes at him. Oliver found this highly annoying, particularly since, despite her faults, he adored his mother and would have gladly given her his last five hundred pounds, if he hadn’t long ago blown it on the black-faced ram.