Of Love and Slaughter

by Angela Huth

  ‘There’s been a certain amount to see to. Pretty grim, all the post-death stuff.’ George took the chair beside Prodge. From its split leather back a foam of discoloured stuffing threatened to irritate any head so foolish as to lean against it. Once lowered between its battered arms, he regarded the familiar facade of the Rayburn cooker, its enamel the colour of aged teeth, scratched and muddied. But in its old age there was no lessening of the warmth it produced. ‘The worst thing was giving Hollow her notice.’

  ‘Hollow? Going? You mean you’re going to modernise things a bit, bring the old firm more in line with the twenty-first century?’

  ‘Not exactly’

  Nell came in holding out bloodied hands. She went straight to the sink, held them under a tap. The sound of the gush of water making its metallic landing in the old sink, mixed with the smell of pipe smoke and clothes touched with night-ice, was a combination so familiar to George, in this house, that it fed his senses with a comfort beyond compare. He sipped his whisky, a second warmth, keeping his eyes on the glass.

  ‘I’m giving up the firm. Closing it down.’

  Nell turned off the tap. She came to kneel on the rag rug that covered the stone flags in front of the stove.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said after a while.

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed her brother. ‘I never reckoned your heart would be in any kind of office business. You’re always happiest out in the open.’

  George was not surprised by their approval. For years they had always understood each other’s plans and would not presume to question them. But he went on to explain a little of his reasoning, the fact that the firm had scant potential in the hands of one whose real ambition was to work on the land.

  ‘But there’s one problem,’ he ended. ‘I’ve a lot left to learn about farming, as you know. I only ever did a bit of casual labour – weekends, holidays. Helping my father. There was nothing he didn’t know about it all. I never learnt about the science.’

  ‘No need to worry about that,’ said Prodge. ‘Science of farming? What do Nell and I know about that? Long as you watch carefully, think ahead, use your common sense, you learn as you go along. Besides, you’ve got Saul and Ben up there. Two exceptionally good men. There’s little they don’t know’

  ‘I’m lucky there.’ George paused. ‘I’d like to buy a bit more land, couple of hundred more sheep.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Nell. ‘Investment.’

  ‘I’ll be coming to you for advice. You’ll have to make sure I don’t decide on some damn fool thing.’

  ‘You come to us often as you want,’ said Prodge. ‘Your father would expect our generation to work together, just as he did with our old man.’

  The three of them sat in silence for a while, envisaging George’s future as a new, lone farmer.

  ‘Of course,’ Prodge went on after a while, ‘owning your own place, you’ve got that difference going for you. Not that we don’t love this place, slave our guts out to make it work. But there’s always the thought in your mind: in the end it belongs to someone else. If things went wrong for us, we’d have nothing to sell, nothing to fall back on. We do quite nicely, but we’re a long way off being able to buy something of our own. We couldn’t cope with a mortgage on top of all the other commitments, could we, Nell? Fact is, I reckon we’ll always be tenant farmers.’

  This difference between his own status – the security of owned property – and that of his friends had always troubled George. He felt an irrational guilt, but knew there was nothing he could do to erase it. The fact was that his father, a lawyer by profession, was a richer man than Prodge’s father, who had begun life as a farm labourer and become a tenant farmer at the same time as David Elkin had bought his farm. The properties, a mile apart, were very different. His was a large distinguished farmhouse (before it fell into decay) with three hundred acres and handsome outbuildings. This house, which old Mr Prodger had been so delighted to find, was small, unkempt, north-facing on a bitter hillside. There were a hundred acres and, initially, a scrawny flock of sheep. Gradually, some of the buildings were renovated and the flock increased: Will Prodger won many prizes for his sheep. He worked exhausting hours with help only from his wife. When her father, who had won a few thousand on the football pools in his youth, left her enough to buy a flat on the Costa Brava, the Prodgers’ decision to leave was instant. They were worn out, longed for a few years of carefree life before they were too old to enjoy it. So the tenancy of the farm was passed to their son Prodge (as George, aged five, had nicknamed John) when he was twenty-five. Prodge, who had assumed that the chance to run the place himself would not come for many years, was invigorated by the challenge. Nell, who had had youthful ideas of training young horses, abandoned the plan in favour of staying to help her brother.

  They had lived on the farm all their lives, seen it develop with their help, had no desire to move. George, so close, was their constant companion. His years away at boarding school, then university, meant long partings. But reunions between the three, both as children and then as grown-ups, were never hard. They did not go in for the exchange of news: simply carried on wherever they had left off. As children it was the race to the top of a tree (George usually won). As grown-ups it was looking at progress on each other’s farms: a new milking machine for the Prodgers’ few cows, a new roof on the Elkins’ barn.

  ‘So how are you going to manage, alone in the house?’ asked Prodge eventually.

  ‘I’ll be fine. Dusty’s going to stay on, keep it in order for me. See to it I don’t starve. She wants to keep on with a small job. I don’t think she could contemplate leaving after so long, luckily for me.’

  Prodge grunted. A crooked smile began to crack his serious expression.

  ‘Probably’ he said, ‘what you could do with is a wife.’

  It was impossible for George not to notice that Nell, head down examining the weary old rug, blushed vividly. She laughed. But she always disliked it when Prodge made one of his teasing references to a future in which she and George married one day: good solution all round, in Prodge’s opinion. They knew each other well enough. They’d make the perfect couple. Nell allowed a pause just long enough to convey how stupid she thought her brother was being, then she tipped up her ruby cheeks, looked George squarely in the eye.

  ‘That’s just what you need,’ she agreed. ‘You better start looking. Though where you’re going to find one, these parts, God only knows.’ Her voice, straining for merriness, held a fine hairline crack. George smiled back at her, nodding.

  ‘See what I can do,’ he said.

  George was aware that Nell had had a profound attachment to him all her life. As young children, she had always stuck up for him in any argument against Prodge, and was always willing to carry out some task she thought would please him. Mostly, she did little to show her affection for fear of Prodge’s teasing, but there were occasions when it seemed clear to George that he was one of the most important people in her life. Once, he briefly kissed her in East Coppice, when she was twelve, and he was fourteen. They had stopped to shelter from rain under the dense branches of an oak tree. Nell was holding a collie puppy, which squirmed and whimpered between their closely pressed bodies. Then Nell dropped the puppy and they drew quickly apart, horrified to think it might have been hurt. They were so busy checking that it was all right, comforting the small yapping creature, that neither noticed the other’s cheeks rubbed to sore red, and the shakiness of their hands. Four years later, at a Young Farmers’ Dance, George had kissed her again. This time, after no more than five seconds of blissful engagement, in which George tasted strawberries on her mouth and lodged one hand on her collarbone, one on her waist, she resisted. She had removed his (amazingly controlled) hands and turned her head away with a small moan. Then she had resolutely walked away from him, a fan of material at the back of her skirt swishing from side to side, melancholy as a goldfish’s tail. George had felt confused, sad, guilty. He hoped his crass gesture
would spoil nothing between them, and evidently it did not. The next day he helped her load up the sheep for market. Nell behaved as if the crude attempt, and her rebuff, had never taken place. After that, George did not try again. He appreciated Nell was a friend as devoted to him as she was to her own brother, and in the same way. Sibling love, it was, and therefore not threatening. George also realised – with some relief – when they were teenagers, that Nell knew his own love for her was not the kind that would ever change from affectionate friendship to the scarier realm of lover. He imagined her ease with him came from sharing that relief.

  The three of them sat round the stove talking, as they so often did, of sheep, market prices, hunting. When these topics were exhausted, they shifted to their store of mutual childhood reminiscences. These always caused them laughter and the astonishment that events of the past, however innocent, can bring in recollection. How foolish they had been, on occasions: how thoughtless, how wild, how happy. The thing that most intrigued him, said Prodge, was that their very different education had done nothing to sever their friendship. He and Nell had been to the local school, frustrated by the lack of available subjects on offer, and the large classes barely contained by too few overworked teachers. George had been to public school and university, and had thrived in the scholarly atmosphere. But these differences made no division between them. George made new friends and sometimes brought them home. But no one could replace Prodge and Nell in his affections. They in turn looked upon his new friends from a different world with interest, eager to like them, and safe in the knowledge that their position in George’s life was unlikely to be usurped.

  As children, only occasionally did they show any curiosity about his school life. Sometimes, sitting high up in their favourite tree, they would ask him for stories of ancient Greece or Rome. He was good at telling stories, they claimed, and listened to him for many hours. This pastime was only abandoned when, as teenagers, the appeal of visits to the pub took over. When George went up to Oxford, Nell looked wistful. In another world, she would like to have studied history there, she said. Keenly she questioned George, each vacation, about parties and tutorials: the wistful look returned with each description. Prodge showed no interest in George’s university life, and turned down an invitation to spend a weekend there. By then he was working full-time on his father’s farm, and his preoccupations were very far from those of his old friend. When George returned home he was anxious to talk about matters of the land, which he loved, to Prodge, while Prodge had no inclination to discuss things intellectual with George. This arrangement worked with a natural ease that gave no reason for discussion.

  It was midnight when George arose to go. Nell came out into the yard with him.

  ‘So you’ll be home from now on?’ she asked.

  ‘Not entirely, for a few weeks. There’s quite a lot of boring stuff to be done, selling up, closing down, writing to the few remaining clients. But I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon for a meeting with the lads, get their views on what should be done. Then I’m going to creosote a fence.’ He glanced up at the moon. ‘I think I shall rather enjoy that.’

  ‘I can’t hunt tomorrow,’ said Nell. ‘Both horses out of action. I could come over and help if you like.’

  ‘Why not? I’d like to know what you think about the barn, too. Whether it’s beyond repair …’

  ‘I’ll be there.’ Nell nodded. George kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘You run in,’ he said. ‘You’ll freeze out here.’

  It occurred to him, driving home, just how much help Nell had been on the Elkin farm over the years. However relentless and exhausting the labour needed by her and Prodge on their own land, she always found time to come over to assist – frequently with the endlessly dull paperwork. David Elkin once observed that she came so often he scarcely noticed her. George guiltily recollected that he sometimes took her for granted, too. He would look into the office, see her at the desk, give her no more than a friendly nod. At harvest time she always lent a hand for no reward and, skilled as she was with birthing ewes, her help with lambing went way beyond the call of friendship. This was all wrong, George reflected. Very wrong. In future, as part of the general change, her help – and God knows how she made time considering all the work on the Prodgers’ farm – must be put on some sort of formalised footing. He would speak to her about it. She would resist. He would insist.

  Home, tired, he stoked the almost cold ashes in the grate. The flames of what now seemed a long, long time ago had died down to the odd firefly sparkle in the grey powder that had been such handsome logs. The picture came to George of Lily twirling her flame-lit foot, talking, talking: and of Nell, quiet on the rag rug, her pale countenance briefly disturbed by the deep blush. They were pictures with no thoughts behind them. He went up to bed.

  George was both touched and impressed by the efficiency with which Hollow worked to close down the firm and put the premises on the market. He knew what heartbreak this last job must be causing her, and did his best to maintain a measure of sympathy just deep enough to provide comfort, but not so great that it would mean a fight against tears. He felt there was little he could do to help, unacquainted as he was with the years of records, filing and general paraphernalia, so he gratefully left it mostly to Hollow, who worked away throwing things out, packing in boxes only papers she thought might be of interest to George, to be kept in the farm attics. George himself worked hard on the composition of a letter to the remaining clients, suggesting they might like to move to Slasher, Reed and Hedley – a very different sort of firm, he was bound to point out, but doubtless able to provide an up-to-date service.

  The premises of E, A & P were fought over by several businesses who judged that the view of the cathedral meant it was a valuable site. There was a secret bid. George thought how astonished his father would have been at the sum the building went for: in 1927 he had bought it for two thousand pounds. He was indeed surprised himself, pleased to think he could now buy more land and improve his buildings without a mortgage, and also put a comforting amount in the bank.

  Just five weeks after breaking the difficult news to Hollow, he arrived to find her sweeping the floors of empty rooms. Walls and shelves were bare. The stalagmites of files had disappeared. The partners’ desk had been moved to the office at the farm. The place now looked bigger – and pathetic, now that its shabbiness was fully exposed. George gave Hollow the antique clock, explaining its provenance. Hollow said she would prefer to unwrap it at home. Then George took her for a proper lunch, with sherry and red wine, in the dining room of the Bridge Hotel. She recalled for him several memorable occasions during her career working for the firm, and allowed herself two helpings of jam roll. When they parted, George gave her an envelope containing a cheque which would easily cover the refurbishing of her bungalow. He had learnt that this was her keenest ambition for her retirement. They shook hands, made no attempt at appropriate words of farewell. Hollow tipped back her head and in the last look she gave him, thought George, she was seeing not him but his father as the young man who had employed her forty years before.

  4

  The sky was a forest of dark clouds swayed by a slow wind. There was a smell of rain, warning of the downpour to come. In the poor light the view from the farmhouse was indistinct. Hills, valley and fans of leafless trees were affected by this twilight gloom, so strange in early morning.

  George came out of the house in his father’s leather jacket, some forty years old, infallible protection against the most bitter weather. It was to be his first day working full-time on the farm with Saul, who had been employed by David Elkin for the past twenty years. Saul’s wife Betty inherited the village post office from her parents, and used to run it with a flair that brought customers from miles away. She died when their son, Ben, was four years old. Saul looked after the child with no help, while his sister-in-law, Jenny, took on the post office, which thrived just as well as it did in Betty’s day. The child Ben spent every moment
when not at school helping on the Elkin farm, and loved it. He could never be persuaded to go elsewhere for a holiday.

  Ben grew up with ambitions to buy his own farm. As soon as he left school he was employed by Mr Elkin, and worked four days a week with Saul. A single free day enabled him to join a course in agriculture at a local college. While Ben admired his father’s experience and wisdom when it came to animals and crops, he himself was determined to acquire some formal knowledge of the science of modern farming. Saul had never had the opportunity to go to an agricultural college, and privately thought common sense and experience was all most good farming people needed. But when Mr Elkin offered to pay Ben’s fees, Saul wished his son well, and the theories Ben came home with made for lively arguments in the evenings.

  Father and son were a good team: reliable, hard-working, of few words. George, like his father, trusted Saul’s judgement, had faith in his advice. Under his guidance the farm had grown and thrived. The eighties were good years for British farming. Subsidies were high, farmers were comparatively rich. When profits were made, David Elkin would always give a bonus to Saul above his salary, and George had every intention of continuing this practice. Also like his father before him, George would be responsible for the paperwork, for Saul was a man by nature uncomfortable sitting at a desk struggling with figures that confused him. To be on the seat of a tractor, or with his stick behind a flock of sheep, whistling to his dogs – that was the point of farming to Saul. In his opinion, to fret over rule books written in incomprehensible language was a waste of precious time.

  On the dark morning that George walked towards the lambing shed where last year’s lambs were to be vaccinated and three lame rams were to have their hooves trimmed, he sensed the kind of pleasure – the kind of importance – that he knew would never have greeted him in a solicitor’s office. Even on his short journey to the shed he saw there was much to be done. The yard was cluttered with obsolete rusting machinery and piles of plastic sheeting discarded from stacks of big-bale silage – for which, as yet, there was no organised method of recycling. Over flagstones, wood, bolts and bricks a veil of green algae had run rampant. The yard needed scraping, scouring. He would do it himself, this afternoon, George thought. For a long time he had known there was too much work for Saul and Ben, but his father had resisted a third helper. Now, his contribution would make all the difference. He delighted in the idea of the improvements that would be made.