by Angela Huth
In the autumn of 1999 there was a second Farmers’ March, this time to Bournemouth where the Labour Party Conference was being held. It was decided that George should go, taking Ben. He suggested to Nell that she should come too, but, increasingly concerned about Prodge’s silent, fragile state, she did not want to leave him even for a day.
The gathering of farmers was smaller and quieter than the Countryside March the year before in London. There was an air of deadly serious intent: the farmers, bursting with their grievances, wanted to make their voices heard. In this the marchers were frustrated: not a single delegate or minister was prepared to come out and listen to them, talk to them. While inside the conference hall, as George heard on his radio, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was boasting to his audience that Labour was going to reward the hardest working of the population, outside stood hundreds of despairing farmers quietly protesting at their sixty-hour weeks on zero incomes – the direct result of the government’s inability to handle agriculture, or to understand the problems.
George had never seen Ben, by nature a quiet and shy young lad, so enraged. After hanging about for the whole morning to no avail – aware that the press were waiting for an outburst from a farmer whose patience finally snapped – at lunchtime they saw delegates slink out of the building to avoid the protestors’ eyes. Ben slipped from George’s side. George saw him approach an unsympathetic looking woman who cast a brief sneer at the patient crowd. George moved nearer. Ben’s fists were clenched, threatening. But his natural shyness took over.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘what are you going to do to help us? We’re not being unreasonable.’
The woman turned on him, brittle in her navy suit.
‘You lot,’ she snapped, waving a hand at the farmers, ‘should realise you only represent a very small and very insignificant percentage of the workforce. Farmers are like any other business. They must learn to stand on their own two feet.’
She was off, back to the safety of the other delegates, united in the smugness of their opinions about farmers. Ben turned pale, as if he had been attacked.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘She’s sick.’ He resumed his place beside George. He was patted on the back: hero of the moment for having spoken up. And later he was further cheered by the friendliness and sympathy of some of the policemen who lined the route. In the late afternoon, police and farmers joined in barbecues organised by local companies.
‘There are people on our side,’ George said in the coach on the way home. ‘Who’s paid for our transport, the buses? People who believe in us. Who are those people waving, cheering us on? People who believe in us. It’s the government who don’t give a toss for farming – aren’t interested, don’t understand, urban almost to a man. A few years ago none of us could have imagined all this, could we? The stranglehold. But look: look at all those urging us on. New Labour’s got a fight on its hands.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Ben, very slowly, for he never spoke very fast, ‘is how that old bitch can say we’re an insignificant part of the workforce. I mean, we drive for four hours through all this well-farmed country – how did it get to be like that? Has anyone in power ever given a thought as to exactly what it takes to keep the land in good order? Bet you anything you like scarcely a person in MAFF has sat on a tractor, lifted a bale of silage, buried a dead sheep. I don’t understand what’s going through their minds: perhaps they think we’re just going to go away, stop being a nuisance. I don’t understand their lack of sympathy, their blindness, their sheer bloody stupidity. They must know we’ve a good case, that’s why they wouldn’t speak to us. Didn’t want to be confronted … shit, what a day.’
George, achingly depressed by the disappointing outcome of the event, looked in wonder at the young lad who had worked for him unstintingly hard for ten years: Ben had never thought of anything but a farming life. He had little hope of ever having a farm of his own, but that did not worry him. To work with the animals and tend the land with the same skill as his father was all he wanted. Now, his face was crimson. Never before had he made such a speech, delivered such an attack on the powers beyond his reach. George could see he was moved, shaken, dismayed. His own feeling of gloom increased: today had confirmed the fact that farmers had long recognised – that there was no future for the young in this business. He handed Ben his small flask of whisky. Ben opened it, sniffed.
‘Never touched this stuff before,’ he said, ‘but, yeah, I’ll give it a go. Could do with something. Thanks.’ He took a couple of swigs, then fell asleep. George let his eyes trail over the passing fields, sheep and cows. The insignificant land, he thought. Green and pleasant, but insignificant in the opinion of the government.
By the time they got back to the farm it was dark. Instead of going to the cottage, Ben asked George if he could come in for a moment. In the kitchen they sat at the empty table, the dolorous tick of the clock fending off the silence between them. George suggested a drink. Ben said he’d like a beer this time. He sat with his hands spread out on the table – enormous they were, George observed, out of all proportion to the rest of the lad’s narrow, sinewy body. So many pictures of those hands, with their rimed nails, came to George’s mind: stroking a sick cow, wrenching a piece of stubborn machinery, grasping a bale of hay, patting his sheepdog Wench. Now they shook very slightly, losing the battle to relax. When George put down two opened bottles and glasses, they clenched up into fists taut not with the readiness for a fight, but trying for control. Ben looked down at them as if they were nothing to do with him, no part of him.
‘I have to say something to you,’ he said at last.
He lifted one of his hands as if with a conscious effort and tugged at the knot of his tie. It was a woven thing, deep red, scrawny as Ben himself. The only other occasion on which George had ever seen Ben in the tie was at his and Lily’s wedding. The thought that he had put it on – most probably at his father’s suggestion – to protest to people who cared not a damn about his livelihood touched George deeply.
‘It’s something that’s been boiling up in my mind,’ Ben went on at last, ‘and today has finally put it all into place for me. Maybe if I hadn’t come with you, maybe if you’d taken Nell, or Dad, I wouldn’t have come to this decision. But I’m going to have to go.’
‘Go?’
‘Leave. Leave farming. Animals, land, all the stuff I’ve always liked. Put it out of my mind, do something else.’
‘I see,’ said George, and waited.
‘There’s thousands have come to the same decision, aren’t there? At first I thought they were bloody pathetic. Now I understand why. Farming’s not what it was. Maybe never will be again. I know I’m one of the lucky ones, employed by you, security. You’re good and generous, too – don’t get me wrong. Working here’s been bloody marvellous. But it’s the whole … thing that’s finally got me down. There’s not a boy I was at school with whose Dad’s a farmer is following on. They’re all up and off making good money somewhere in the towns. My friend Tom – you remember him? – I hardly ever see him now. But I ran into him the other day. Told me he was making two hundred pounds a week, decent hours, in the motorbike business. Another mate’s in some computer business doing nicely, and Mr Friel’s son – I heard he’d gone into the supermarket, some kind of under-manager, bonuses and everything. They thought I was off my head, sticking at farm work eighteen hours a day all weathers. They thought I was bloody pathetic. It’s only going to get worse, they said: get out while you can. So I began to think. I have to say, the thoughts kept on coming back to me. That they’re right, I mean.’
‘I understand,’ said George. This stream of consciousness from a man of so few words – he found himself too moved even to try to express the sympathy he felt.
‘I mean … look at it like this. I’m only twenty-five, Mr Elkin. What’s going to happen to me if I stay? Will I ever get a life? The powers that be don’t give a bugger about us. Farmers used to be respected, valued. I get the feel
ing we’ve become a very low priority now, and one day all they’ll want us for is to keep the fields looking nice for tourists. I don’t want any part of that. Give me a yard of muck to deal with and I’m happy. But what I’m saying is, I don’t want to end up like my dad, Mr Elkin. Works like a dog, old before his time, nothing but worry these days – and what when he retires? Doesn’t own an acre of land, nothing.’
‘Of course I’ll see Saul—’
‘I know you will. You’re the best employer for a hundred miles. Dad and I know that. But for me, I want independence. I’d like my own smallholding, thirty cows. I’d like to go away for a few years, make some money, come back and get on with the dream.’
‘Doubt you’d be able to live on thirty cows.’
‘That’s what my granddad did, Mum’s side. Very happy.’
‘Times have changed.’
‘I realise that. But with the money I’d made in … well, I’m not a bad electrician, for instance. I could do a course. Could make my fortune.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Because I’d want to come back. I mean, I want to die a farmer, not fade away above some bloody fish and chip shop in a city.’
George shifted in his chair. A weariness went through his bones.
‘I sympathise,’ he said quietly, ‘completely. I do. And you must go, you must try. If I can do anything to help you get a footing in the outer world … I mean, I have a friend who runs an electrical company, for instance.’
‘I’d appreciate that. And I realise of course that I’d be leaving you in the … letting you down. You and Dad’d be hard put to cope with everything here. You’d need someone to replace—’
‘Don’t worry about that. There’s no shortage of men needing work. Alan Brooks – you know, Alan the haulier – I heard only yesterday he’s had to lay off two men. There’s a good chance he’ll have to pack it in altogether, he said. Petrol prices, local slaughterhouse closed, can’t make ends meet—’
‘But if it’s all right with you,’ interrupted Ben, ‘I won’t be off just yet awhile. I’ll have to look around, take my bearings. I’ll not leave you in the lurch.’
‘Thanks.’ George nodded. ‘Does Saul know of your decision?’
‘Not yet. I didn’t want to say anything till it was definite. It was only definite a few hours ago, coming back in the bus, thinking about the way we’d been treated. I’ll tell Dad in the morning.’
The two men stood up.
‘It’ll work out all right,’ said George. ‘I’m sure. The thing about a big shift in life is that it’s easier to cope with once the decision’s been firmly taken.’
A look of doubt crossed Ben’s troubled young face. He touched his tie again, still swung his jaw from side to side.
‘Well thanks, Mr Elkin. Sorry to have kept you so late.’
They shook hands. Last time they had done this it was Ben’s twenty-first birthday, when in a short speech at a gathering in the pub he had shyly declared that nothing could ever beat farming.
The following day George noticed that Saul, whose cheek often twitched when he was particularly tired or anxious, kept touching his face as if to quell the constant spasm of his skin. He said nothing, but he made a point of helping George move the sheep from Top Meadow to a field in the valley. When they had finished they leant on the gate, as they often did, just looking at the flock. The ewes were bunched together at first. Then, as indeterminately as clouds, they moved away from each other, chose their patch of grass for a spell of independence before huddling together again for the night.
Saul screwed up his eyes against a hard orange sun low in the sky: it cast a chip of gold into each of his pupils. His was a face of battered handsomeness. Sometimes George thought it hadn’t changed since, as a child, he had first known Saul. But looking at him this evening he realised, with reluctance, that anxiety, fatigue and relentless hard work had had their cruel effects.
‘Sorry about the lad,’ said Saul eventually. ‘Suppose you can’t blame him.’
‘Course not. I’m sorry too. But his decision’s understandable.’
‘He’ll not be off yet awhile, he says. Last thing he wants is to let you down. Could be he’ll change his mind.’
‘Could be.’
‘The do yesterday seemed to have churned him up.’
‘Hostile lot, they were. Didn’t give a damn. Wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t speak. Ben was a hero. Went up to this old bat—’
‘So I heard.’ Saul moved his jaw back and forth in the manner of his son the night before. ‘Course, he won’t like the sort of job he’s got in mind. Farming’s in his blood – six generations of us have worked the land. His mother’ll be turning in her grave. I’ll grant you he’ll be back. If he goes, that is.’
‘Perhaps,’ said George.
Saul’s wife had died when Ben was four. Saul had brought the child up, with no help, in the cottage. Ben’s departure, for his father, would mean a loss George could understand all too well.
They went on watching the sheep, bunches of grey against the dusk. By now the sun had disappeared leaving a single tinsel thread of gold strung across the acreage of grey, and it was turning cold.
14
As a trained lawyer, George had always considered himself reasonably able when it came to paperwork, but as ever more near-incomprehensible booklets of instruction thundered through the door, even he despaired. His simple conclusion was that the Ministry of Agriculture had become more attached to the importance of bureaucracy than to the real life of farmers – rearing animals, tending the land, producing. The price of receiving subsidies – frustration, anger, precious time – was for many too high. It was being faced with the ludicrous amount of paperwork, even more than the rock-bottom prices for their animals, that was for many the last straw.
‘How many times have I tried getting through to the help line?’ Peter Friel asked George. Friel fought against his age by making a gallant effort to keep up with the new practices. ‘And when at last there’s an answer it’s a recorded voice telling you things that don’t concern you. You can never speak to anyone in charge. I’ve given up. Most of us have given up.’
Those who bothered to read the plethora of information sent out by MAFF were given to understand that within a few years all subsidies were to be paid through the internet, thus they would be paid several months earlier. This so-called ‘good news’ implied that farmers would now have to buy computers to ‘ease’ their lives. The help previously given by a sympathetic MAFF official in a regional office would be no more. Not only would farmers earning scarcely more than the price of a computer be expected to buy a terrifyingly complicated machine, they would then have to put aside working time to learn how to use the thing. When George told Saul this, the old man laughed a greater laugh than he had for a long time.
‘You can see it, can’t you? Us who’s good at sheep and cows and crops and that, us men with big hands to deal with tractors and heavy jobs, trying to get our fingers round to understanding all that fiddle-faddle with office machinery.’
On a grim November afternoon George sat at his desk before the huge pile of unattended papers. He wondered why it was that civil servants were inherently masochistic. Why did they enjoy increasing the hardships of EU red tape by translating the directives from Brussels in a form far more complicated than the original? And why were their rules so long-winded? A British form to apply for a CAP subsidy was twenty-two pages, though the same form in Ireland was only two. Why had none of these rule-writers ever learnt the art of précis? Was it beyond them, in their Whitehall offices, to imagine the life of the overworked, exhausted, despairing farmer who received them?
George’s reflections broke off to read for the twentieth time the latest postcard from Lily. It came from Bournemouth. Here for a few days, she had written. She never said who with. Was her random flitting from place to place always alone? A publisher seems interested in my idea of writing a book about How to Face a Picture. Love, love L. – Bournemouth! They’d been th
ere once, stayed with some old aunt. Perhaps that’s where she was, safely, innocently, with the aunt, not that far away. George wondered whether if he left now and drove round the streets near the aunt’s house – he could remember, roughly, where it was – he might run into her. He looked at the papers before him, and decided, as always when the foolishness of trying to find her seized him, that it was a bad idea.
But he would, as had become his odd habit, reply – pathetically, as he saw it, to record his anguish. For once, he decided against a card of a painting she loved and chose instead a sepia photograph of the farm that had been taken when his parents first bought it: a ramshackle place, so changed now – by Lily. That might jolt her, he thought. Remind her. So pleased a publisher seems interested, he wrote. Darling Lily, please come home now. I want you, I miss you, I love you. G. He flung the card into the drawer with the others. He was impatient with himself. The act of writing unseen words no longer brought relief. He couldn’t think why he carried on with the hopeless ritual.
He picked up the three heavy booklets sent to aid filling in IACS forms. So turgid was their style, so soul-deadening their attempt at creative explanation, that he gave up after a few pages. He would try to struggle on without them, he thought: might even scribble a few suggestions in the margins. The grim job ahead required him to declare what he intended to grow on every field on his land, and precisely where the planting would be. On other forms he had to explain what subsidies he was applying for. What he dreaded – what all small farmers dreaded – was the possible failure of a crop. Should this happen and resowing become necessary, so were more forms. George picked up his pen, then put it down again. A pain had begun to bite at the back of his neck, rising through his skull. He opened, then quickly shut, a file of milk quota forms. He screwed up a form about The Assured Combinable Crop Scheme, and banged his fist on a pile of cow passports, knowing they were not up to date. They fell to the floor, scattering. He had no energy to pick them up. Instead he started dully to read about the Country Stewardship Scheme he had recently joined. The bonus was that they had paid to replace some of his old trees and for the renovation of hedges Ben had not had time to attend to. But was the subsidy worth the brain-numbing job of deciphering the complicated rules? And if all this paperwork was finally dementing him, what must it be like for those older, less educated, and less used to officialdom? George pictured some of the neighbouring farmers – Peter Friel, whose eyes were failing, Jack Lamont, who had had to lay off his helper. He pictured these and other men in their various kitchens, cold, tired, fed up, helpless. In better times, at the end of a long day of hard physical labour, they could be sure of an hour or so of peace in an armchair before bed. Now they were forever haunted by the nagging spectre of bloody forms. And the only time to deal with them, for most farmers, was at night, when energy was sapped from their tired bodies, and spirits were at their lowest.