by Georgia Hill
‘He’s too runty for gun work and they don’t know what’s gone into him.’ Stan shrugged. ‘Reckon he’ll get taken to that rescue place in Hereford and mebbe someone’ll take him in. Otherwise,’ Stan drew a finger across his neck. Rachel hugged the puppy to her, horrified.
‘The Garths’ springer bitch was got at a while ago, so he’s got some springer in him, but don’t know what else.’ Stan ruffled the puppy’s ears with affection. ‘I’ll take him when you have to go to London,’ he said, pre-empting Rachel’s next objection. ‘No better company than a dog and I reckon he’ll be so grateful to be saved that he won’t leave your side.’
As if in agreement, the puppy snickered, so Rachel tucked her other hand around his scrawny little body and felt the thin ribs under the warm fur. The puppy burrowed its nose into her arm and her heart softened – just a little.
And that’s how the thaw began, with a tiny puppy.
Stan had named him Patch because of the large black mark on his rump, but he soon had another. Maybe it was because he was the runt, or perhaps he was just plain greedy, but Patch ate everything put in front of him – and more. Rachel nicknamed him Piglet and, to her embarrassment, the dog answered to no other name. The name stuck.
For the first time in her life, Rachel allowed herself to be needed. And relished it. Maybe she could learn to accept being needed by Stan, Sheila even? Was it too late for Gabe? She should have paid more attention to Hetty. For all her faults, the one thing Hetty always did was let people in.
So, to Rachel’s surprise she coped when Piglet peed on the kitchen floor, or got her up in the middle of the night, when he was crying for his litter mates. After three sleepless nights in a row, Rachel took him up to her bedroom. She laid copious wads of newspaper on the carpet and snuggled him up in a blanket. But it wasn’t good enough for Piglet. He cried piteously, so Rachel gave in and tucked him against her in bed. There, the puppy snuffled and wriggled against her and they eventually slept.
To Rachel’s amazement, Piglet succeeded where countless men had failed; he unlocked her obsession with cleanliness. She found it impossible to be cross with the dog, even when – horror of horrors – she trod in a puppy poo in the hall. Piglet looked at her with those imploring eyes and she accepted defeat and went to get the mop and bucket.
Stan, when he wasn’t accusing Rachel of spoiling Piglet, helped train him. Soon, the puppy was sitting to command and became, more or less, house-trained.
Rachel gradually began to pick up her work and even found she got more done, as she had to grab her chance when Piglet was asleep. As such, she concentrated more and procrastinated less. And she loved her evenings now, with the puppy’s soft head on her lap, warm against her.
Her walks had new purpose now. She had to go out, whatever the weather, and found she even enjoyed walking in the rain, although she wasn’t sure about wet-dog smell on their return. She found countless narrow lanes to walk along.
Then disaster struck.
She’d heard on the news that an outbreak of foot and mouth had broken out in the south-east but hadn’t given it much thought.
Driving back from the station one afternoon in the frozen gloom, she came upon the sign. Her client had loved the work she’d done on the wild flowers and had commissioned some more. What’s more, Freda had green-lighted the Hetty project and had a publisher in mind. Apart from the constant aching loneliness left by Gabe’s departure and the utterly miserable weather, Rachel was in a good mood.
As she turned off the main road, the sign loomed into view. It shocked her. Huge and sinister and bright red, it stated she was now entering a FOOT AND MOUTH-AFFECTED AREA. She slowed the Fiat, her heart hammering in her mouth. What should she do? Was she allowed to drive through? Did she need to drive through some kind of disinfectant? She edged the car on. There was no one else in sight. Come to think of it, she’d seen no other car since leaving Hereford. The village was peculiarly quiet – and eerie. Rachel put her foot down and drove home.
When she got there, she found Stan entombed in his shed, a mug of coffee in his hand and the local radio station on.
‘It’s a bad business,’ he said and shook his head.
Rachel fended off Piglet’s ecstatic welcome and collapsed onto the other chair. ‘What does it mean?’
‘Ruin for folks round here,’ was Stan’s only reply. He slumped in his chair and stared silently out into the dismal afternoon.
Rachel left him to his radio and, with Piglet at her heels, let herself into the house.
It was a black few weeks that followed. People moved about as little as possible, pubs remained empty, supermarkets lost trade. Rita threatened to close down as trade was so bad. Bridle tracks and footpaths were closed, meaning that Rachel had few options for walking Piglet and the dog became stir-crazy, chewing anything to hand. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t go out, it was just that she felt it looked insensitive to do so, when all around her farmers were barricaded into their homes. When she did venture out, every shop and business had revolting-smelling disinfect mats to walk through, reminding everyone that it was the biggest disaster to hit the countryside since 1967.
Eventually, even Rachel became bored with her own company and she and Stan took Piglet to the Plough. It was empty. Alan greeted them with a desperate joviality.
‘Thank the good Lord,’ he said, as he pulled Stan’s pint. ‘Punters. First round on the house. Been quieter in here than Pugh’s,’ he shook his head, referring to Fordham’s funeral directors.
Rachel gave Stan a sideways glance. ‘I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t feel I was helping by coming out unnecessarily.’
Alan shrugged. ‘Folks round here still got to make a living. It spreads like wildfire. For all you know, could be spread by the car you park next to at the Co-op and I don’t see folk not buying bread,’ he said, in misery. ‘Don’t think those disinfectant mats help neither. So you’re not helping any by staying in and depriving me of my livelihood.’
Stan nodded, acknowledging the man’s anger. ‘No, but you do what you can, don’t you?’ There was a gloomy silence.
‘How’s that baby of your Sharon’s then, Stan?’ Having poured Rachel’s wine, Alan reached for a glass and began polishing it. He was obviously in need of company and making an effort, now the subject of foot and mouth was closed.
Stan shook his head and concentrated on his beer. ‘Bouncing little boy,’ he said with a grin. ‘Takes after me,’ according to Sharon. ‘She’s mighty vexed about that. No peace and quiet, though.’
‘Never much of that around with babies.’ Alan peered over the bar, to where Piglet was scratching vigorously. ‘Or dogs, come to that. Reckon that collie at the Cross Farm got to the Garth’s springer, by the looks of things.’
‘Ar. Reckon so, he’s clever enough to have collie in him.’ Stan got some money out. ‘Another round and this time we pay. One for yourself?’
Alan nodded. ‘Might as well,’ he gave a short laugh, ‘it’s not going to busy tonight. Again.’ He took Stan’s pint pot and began to pull another beer. ‘Speaking of the Garths, did you hear?’
Stan pursed his lips. ‘Saw the sign up on the fence. Man’s lost his livelihood overnight. Had a slaughterman’s licence, so he’s shot ‘em himself.’
Rachel looked at them both, an ominous feeling rising in her gut. ‘What’s happened?’
Stan took a long gulp of beer and wiped his mouth before answering. ‘Foot and mouth notice gone up at the Garth’s. He’s had to shoot five hundred sheep and over two hundred cows.’ Stan took another long draught of beer, emptying the glass.
Alan gave a heartfelt sigh. ‘They’ve been farming in the village for over two hundred years. Terry Garth’s been put on suicide watch, I hear.’ He tutted. ‘Bad, bad business.’
Rachel reached down and tugged gently on Piglet’s ears. She needed some physical comfort. She’d only glimpsed the Garth family around the village, but knew they were one of the longest-established in the area. The vi
ews of their land and its livestock were one of the joys of living up on the ridge. It was shocking to think that their whole farm was gone and that a man would be so afflicted by the crisis he was considered vulnerable to suicide.
She thought back to her day in London. Although foot and mouth had been in the newspapers, the city functioned as usual, impervious to the unfolding rural disaster.
Alan refilled Stan’s glass. ‘Fancy a sandwich? Was just going to make myself one. No meat,’ he added, as unspoken comment on their topic of conversation. ‘I’ve got a bit of Hereford Hop and some of Rita’s homemade pickle.’
Neither Rachel nor Stan were in the mood to eat, but sensed Alan wanted to keep busy.
When he’d disappeared into the kitchen, Stan said, ‘The countryside’s showing you another side of its skirt, isn’t it? The grubby side. But it ain’t all wild flowers and pretty views.’
Rachel nodded. With the long dark days, the endless mud and now this, the reality of living in the countryside was beginning to hit hard. ‘What will the Garths do?’ She knew they had a teenage daughter and a son at college.
Stan shook his head and replied, through thin lips, ‘There’s talk of compensation, but money don’t fill the gap the animals left. Terry’s spent his life building up his herd of Herefords.’ He shrugged and sank into gloom.
Alan bustled back, carrying heavily laden plates. ‘On top of everything else, I’m going to be a barmaid short. Did you hear Dawn’s got herself in the family way?’
Rachel felt herself stiffen.
‘No,’ Stan said in a non-committal tone. ‘Wenches these days, eh? Don’t wait to get a ring on their finger, do they?’
‘That they don’t. But she’s getting wed. To young Gabe, I reckon. When all this is over with.’ Alan waved his hand at the empty pub meaning the foot and mouth crises.
With a heavy heart, Rachel led Piglet to a table by the fire. Stan followed and they spent the rest of the evening sat in silence, each deep in their own thoughts.
So Dawn had ensnared Gabe; there was no chance of him returning to her now. Staring into the fire, Rachel wished she’d stayed at home. At least she could have pretended, for a while longer, that she and Gabe had a chance. She cursed herself for letting him go, for driving him away – and tried to hold back the tears. Her romantic rural idyll was turning out to be anything but; her beloved village was drowning in a life-changing crisis. Even the weather conspired to depress. And now she’d lost Gabe forever.
‘At least,’ she whispered to Piglet, his nose resting devotedly on her knee but really edging closer to her half-eaten sandwich, ‘I haven’t ended up a lonely old woman surrounded by cats.’
But this was little comfort when she didn’t have Gabe.
She couldn’t bear it any longer and left Stan in the pub.
As she walked up the track, she became aware of a smell. It was all-pervading and oddly familiar but sickly – like a burnt Sunday roast. Rounding the last bend, she could see the sky glowing orange. She ran the last half mile or so, Piglet bounding in front. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong. Now burning invaded her nostrils, acrid with an underlying oily accelerant. She had put the fireguard around the open fire, hadn’t she? Ignoring her protesting thighs and gasping lungs, she got to the top of the track and stopped. Her cottage was intact. Not on fire. Leaning on the chestnut tree, to catch her breath and ignoring a barking Piglet, she looked towards the burning horizon.
The pyres ran the entire length of the Garth’s biggest field. Flames, peculiar, unnatural bluey-red flames shot thirty or forty feet into the uncaring night sky. Terry Garth was having to burn his stock. His life’s work. His family’s future.
Standing against the tree, her legs shaking from the shock and her face heated by the fires, even at this distance, Rachel’s eyes and nose stung with the drifting pall of smoke. It was apocalyptic.
It looked as though the end of the world had come.
Chapter 36
April 2001, London
‘I haven’t a bloody clue what’s going on, have you?’ Tim squinted at the service sheet they’d been given on entry to the leisure centre.
‘None at all,’ Rachel replied.
They were at Jyoti’s wedding. The sports hall in Wembley was packed. Some sort of ceremony was going on, on a platform at the far end, but from where Tim and Rachel were sitting, they could hardly make out what was happening. The only contact made with Jyoti was a swift smile as she processed to the wedding platform on the arms of her brother and father. Then she resumed a shy, solemn expression.
She looked completely unfamiliar. Heavily made up, dressed in sumptuous red, white and gold, with bangles weighing down both arms and a heavy gold nose ring and chain linked to enormous hooped earrings. Despite her doll-like appearance, Rachel thought she looked content, serene. Radiant. Maybe this marriage wasn’t such a mistake after all.
Tim and Rachel were surround by women in a gorgeous array of vividly hued saris, gossiping and minding babies. The men stood at the back, chatting animatedly, apparently ignoring the wedding rites being performed, and children ran about the badminton court, playing.
‘They look right together,’ Rachel whispered, nodding towards the elaborate red-and- gold canopied altar, which housed the happy couple.
‘They do, don’t they?’ Tim squeezed Rachel’s hand and she was glad of the physical comfort. So much life and colour was bewildering after coming from a muddy and depressed Herefordshire.
‘Less of a compromise, maybe, made on behalf of our best friend, than we expected?’ He looked insufferably smug.
Rachel pursed her lips and stayed silent. She hated it when Tim was right.
‘Oh come on, sweetness. The man’s a consultant surgeon at UCH. Jyoti’s made for life.’
‘And that’s the main thing, is it? To have a new Mercedes every three years and holiday in the Caribbean?’
Tim laughed. ‘Sounds peachy to me.’
‘Oh, I forgot, I’m talking to a kept man.’ Misery was making Rachel bitchy.
‘Meow said the pussy.’ Tim turned to her. ‘You know, ever since you got to town, you’ve had your cat’s arse face on. It’s been months since your bust up with the Love God.’
Rachel’s face crumpled.
Instantly stricken, Tim said, ‘Oh, babe, what is it?’
‘He’s got another girl pregnant and I think they’re going to get married,’ she wailed. ‘I don’t think he’s ever going to come back to me.’
‘Oh, darling, shush now.’ Tim put an arm around her, but Rachel shook him off.
Rachel stifled her sobs with a tissue, appalled at her display of emotion. ‘Don’t be nice to me. I won’t be able to keep going. Got to put my happy face on for Jyoti and Kam.’
Tim looked around at the mass of people surrounding them. ‘Darling heart, shall we go? Find somewhere for a ruddy great big drink and a chinwag? I don’t think we’ll be missed and we haven’t the fairy faintest of ideas what’s going on anyhow.’
‘We can’t leave,’ Rachel said, scandalised, ‘in the middle of a wedding!’
‘We’ll hardly be disrupting the ceremony,’ Tim said and he pointed towards the networking men at the back. ‘Don’t think they’ve stopped talking since the whole shebang began.’
‘I quite like it,’ Rachel replied, dabbing her eyes and fighting for control. She watched two little boys play tag in the space behind some chairs. They were giggling and slamming into the plastic chairs, making them screech along the floor. No one rebuked or hushed them. In fact the women keeping an eye on them watched with tender pride.
‘Let’s stay – until the bitter end.
‘What – tomorrow?’
Rachel looked at him startled.
‘Oh, yes,’ Tim nodded, ‘this has been going on for two days already and there’s another day of it tomorrow. Family only. This is the public bit.’
‘What did they do yesterday, then?’ Rachel asked, momentarily forgetting her misery.
&
nbsp; Tim shrugged. ‘Don’t know the details, but it was more an intimate family thing, you know, they had to do the official stuff too, at the registry office. They just invited the odd two or three hundred guests to that do.’
Rachel giggled and then her breath caught and ended as a sob. She was jealous. Jealous of Jyoti finding her man, getting married, being happy, no matter what the compromise. Compromise in relationships was what it was all about. You were never going to find someone absolutely perfect. Look at poor old Hetty. Married and widowed in a few short months and not very happy while it lasted. Loving Richard, only for it to end in misunderstanding, maybe loving the mysterious Peter. And then there was Tim. Living with Justin, permanently arguing, always threatening to walk out. She bit her lip. Why had she been so horrible to Gabe? What had he done, after all, that was so bad? Forgotten to do the washing up once or twice, left his copies of newspapers mounting up in an untidy heap in the sitting room, trailed mud in. She remembered how kind he was, how ready to help. She missed the feel of him holding her in the night, his gentle hands caressing her as if she were something very precious. She’d been awful to him. So presumptive. Always trying to boss him about, make him better himself when he was actually perfect as he was. She’d turned into her mother. She was ashamed of herself. No wonder he’d run to Dawn. Her lips trembled and she felt Tim take her hand again.
‘Courage ma petite,’ he whispered. ‘If you insist we stay, we shall. But you’re going to have to locate that happy face if we do.’
Rachel didn’t know how she got through the wedding. There was food at some point, served refectory-style from vast aluminium tanks. Tim said the curries were to die for and tucked in with gusto, but she hardly ate a thing.
As he ate, an usher explained that the sacred fire was being prepared. The Agni Parikama – walking around the fire – would soon take place. It was the central act of the ceremony, he explained. The couple would be tied together and walk around it seven times. They must promise to tend to each other’s needs and be true companions for life.