The Farm at the Edge of the World : A Novel (2016)

by Vaughan, Sarah

  She tries to focus on the barley shimmering in the breeze, the skylarks spiralling overhead, and the sea sleek behind them. A green John Deere tractor crawls down a lane. For a moment, she sees her father driving the combine, his face ruddied as the corn is gathered in. Then she remembers the cool of the local church. The pale wood of his coffin.

  She blinks through eyes that prick and burn. Don’t do this now. Not when you’re minutes from home. Mum won’t want to see you with reddened eyes, to know that you’ve been crying. She peers through the dust-flecked screen. The tractor is coming back, continuing its gentle crawl, like a child’s toy pushed around a farm set. Focus on that. Breathe slowly and deeply; and for God’s sake get a grip.

  A flash of red appears around the corner. The sight makes her wipe her eyes, stem the tears that are threatening to spill over. She knows him. Sam, the postman who delivered letters throughout her childhood and long before then, freewheeling down then cycling back up the hill most days.

  Surely he’s not still going? He must be close to retirement. She watches him pedal his bike: panniers bulging, tanned calves pumping below his incongruous, dark grey shorts.

  Don’t let him notice me, she prays, but as he draws alongside her he glances at the car and his face breaks into a grin of recognition. She smiles back, face tight. A London smile.

  He stops the bike and wheels it back to the car. ‘Lucy? Lucy Petherick?’

  ‘Hello, Sam.’

  ‘Your mother said you were back for the summer.’

  ‘Well, yes. No point being in London when the weather’s this good.’

  ‘Good that you’re here when the emmets come down.’

  ‘Run off their feet, are they?’

  ‘Well not at the moment. Still the effects of this bloody recession.’

  ‘Oh, quite.’ She finds herself curiously calmed by him and their gentle chatter. ‘Tourists still the best crop, though?’

  ‘Let’s hope so, though last year were dire, weren’t he? Better weather this summer. Looks like he’ll be a scorcher.’ He rubs a streak of sweat from his forehead and wipes his hand on his legs. ‘Bet you’re pleased to be out of London, anyway?’

  She had forgotten that he didn’t stop talking.

  ‘Different world here, isn’t it?’

  ‘The edge of the world,’ she says.

  He looks at her quizzically.

  ‘Only world I’ll ever need. Just look at it.’ He gestures at the view: the tide in, the sea calm and sparkling. The coast at its idyllic best. ‘Well, better let you get on. Your grandmother would never forgive me if I kept you from her.’

  ‘No, that’s right.’ She smiles.

  He swings a leg over the saddle, and heaves himself off again.

  Eventually, she restarts the engine and drives down the single-track lane. The air smells salty, cool and fresh. The road ends and she joins a potholed track – far worse than when she last came down in November. The Renault jolts from non-potholed patch to non-potholed patch, and then is up and away, straining to reach the top of the hill in third gear.

  And there it is. Skylark Farm. Its back to the sea to protect it from the elements, its eyes – for she thinks of the windows as these – looking inwards across its land and towards the moor. Behind it, the fields are filled with their summer corn; in front with their cattle: a patchwork quilt of russet, gold and green.

  Some things have altered. The Jerseys have long gone, as have the six pigs that were turned into sausages. And yet, really, little has changed. Milking still takes place twice a day; the barley is harvested each summer; the silage is made, and the cauliflowers are grown. The cattle still run with the bulls throughout the year, and the bull calves are sent to be fattened and slaughtered. The rhythm of the farming year continues, just as it has always done.

  She thought she was immune to all this; that Matt and her work at the hospital was her real life now, and her Cornish heritage – something she barely referred to, that she seemed to shrug off along with her accent – belonged to a different, childish age.

  But it doesn’t. And as she drinks in the view, she finds that her chest is constricting with regret, and, yes, a fragile happiness; and her eyes are brimming with tears.

  Five

  ‘Lucy!’

  Judith’s face is flushed as she runs down the slate path through the garden. She wipes red hands on her apron and catches her daughter in delight.

  ‘Look at you – you’ve gone too thin!’ She pulls away from Lucy, eyes narrowing with concern as she clasps her slight wrists, takes in the dip of her waist, her hollowed cheeks. ‘Oh, my love. Is this because of all the stress?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Lucy tries to laugh at the predictability of her mother’s concern, but moves back into her arms, unable to answer. For a few seconds they just stand there. No one has touched her since Sunday evening: a dutiful hug from Matt before she set off for work and he met Suzi for a drink.

  For a moment, she sees his face: the frank self-absorption as he said he needed ‘some time’, the insubstantial – meaningless – apology. ‘Look, I’m sorry you had to find that,’ he had said, defensive and self-righteous, as if his lover’s hair had nothing to do with him. ‘But perhaps this has happened for the best.’

  A sob bubbles up.

  ‘There, there,’ Judith soothes her like a child.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’ Her tears dampen her mother’s T-shirt, a patch that blooms over her angular shoulder.

  ‘There, there. You’re home now.’ Her mother, half a head shorter than her, pulls her tight. ‘You come inside and we’ll fatten you up. Tom’s created a new ice cream in your honour: lavender and honey, or cardamom and orange.’

  ‘Oh – is he around?’ She half-laughs and feels a stab of apprehension. She owes Tom, the good sibling, who came back to farming, three months after Dad died.

  ‘He’s hay-baling, but he’s going to catch you before the afternoon milking.’ Her mother smiles, and Lucy catches the hint of a strain around her mouth, the suggestion of extreme tiredness. ‘He’s so pleased you’ve come back. Well, we all are,’ she says.

  She pushes open the heavy oak door and they walk through the flagstoned hall towards the heart of the farmhouse. It is all much tattier than she remembers: the wallpaper in the hallway peeling off the walls; cobwebs stroking the ceiling; the corners blotched with mould.

  In the chaotic, cluttered kitchen, the air is scented with scones baking for the tourists, and something else: an earthy, animal smell beyond the usual undertow of cow and muck. Lucy glances to the side of the Aga and the grubby dog basket, now home to Champ, the three-year-old sheepdog. For more than a decade, Floss, the dog of her teenage years, had filled it.

  ‘I can’t get used to her not being here,’ she says.

  Judith starts to load up a tea tray with the Snowman mug used by Lucy throughout her childhood, and the matching plate. She chooses a vast scone, and loads plates with pots of jam and cream – then hesitates over the choice of tea.

  ‘Are you OK with normal? I’m afraid we don’t have anything fancier.’

  ‘Normal is perfect. Here: let me help.’ Lucy moves to the cupboard and hides her face as she selects the caddy, moved by her mother’s desire to make her feel instantly at home, but embarrassed by the distance between them: the fact her mother might think she is too refined to drink the tea of her childhood, the tea she has always drunk with them.

  ‘Mum – I’m sorry I’ve been distant.’ The apology bursts out, unplanned and unexpected. ‘I was so caught up with work, and Matt,’ her voice trembles. ‘Well, you know Cornwall isn’t really his thing.

  ‘I should just have come down without him at Easter, but he was so keen to go somewhere hot for a break.’ Lucy can hear herself over-explaining. ‘Perhaps I knew, deep down, that I shouldn’t leave him alone too much. But I should have popped down at Christmas after my shifts.’

  She risks looking properly at her mother then and sees that Judith’s eyes h
ave lost the film of hurt and anxiety that was clouding them.

  ‘Oh, Lucy,’ she says, and moves closer to her daughter. ‘I’ve missed you, of course I have, but that’s the last thing you should be worrying about now, isn’t it?’

  Lucy blinks away tears. This unconditional support is more than she would have hoped for given her reluctance to visit since Fred’s death.

  Her mother puts her arm around her again. ‘What matters is that you’re here now and that this was the place you felt you could come to when you needed it.’

  Ava Petherick, sturdy-legged and soft-cheeked, is chasing ducks across the lawn and chortling as the mallards race away.

  ‘Duck, duck, duck!’ she sings, pointing at them and then turning to her father for confirmation.

  ‘Duck, Ava. Duck.’

  ‘Duck, duck, duck,’ she repeats. She runs in the opposite direction, now, spying a goose that has found a quiet spot in which to peck, under a hedge.

  ‘Not duck, goose,’ Tom corrects her as he turns back to his sister.

  ‘—Oose?’ Ava tries it out. ‘—Oosey, oose?’

  She runs up to her aunt and looks, enquiringly, at her.

  ‘Oosey?’

  ‘Lucy,’ her father says.

  ‘Oosey,’ she says, emphatic. ‘Oosey,’ and climbs into her father’s arms, confident that she is right; and that she is loved.

  ‘She really is gorgeous, Tom,’ Lucy says as her niece squirrels into him and beams the smile of a small child familiar with adoration. ‘Even lovelier than when she was a baby. I can’t believe how much she’s changed.’

  She drinks in her honey blonde whorls of hair and those big, questioning eyes.

  ‘Seems mad my little brother’s the responsible parent, now!’ She smiles at the tall, broad-chested man opposite her who seems to have aged dramatically in the last year.

  He rubs a hand over his face, embarrassed. ‘Yeah, well. She can be a little terror.’

  They are sitting at a rickety picnic table, used in the afternoon for customers. Behind him, a flock of seagulls wheel down the estuary, and dinghies draw lines of spume across the bay. Lucy rubs her fingers over the lichen on the table, and the mossy green dampening the bench. They used to build dens in this spot, draping rugs over it before gravitating to the blackened broom bushes. Years later, they would perch here and plan where to go, with their mates and cider, on a Saturday night.

  Every feature here is packed tightly with memories: the hedges where she and Tom lay in the dappled shade as their parents harvested; the tree-house their father built one quiet autumn; the barns where they bottle-fed lambs and scooped up chicks.

  There are the spots where significant things happened, too: the dip in the track where she tumbled and broke her arm; the tamarisk tree, behind which she opened her letter from UCAS; the barn in which she almost lost her virginity, before Tom and his best friend, Ben, came blundering in. She grimaces at the memory and looks beyond, to the headland: the spot where she always imagines standing. The land turns wild there and nothing grows except the grass cropped by a neighbour’s sheep, and a mass of hardy vegetation: seagrass, camomile, thrift and vetch.

  ‘Sorry to hear about your work – and that bastard.’ Tom breaks into her thoughts.

  ‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?’ Her stomach tightens. For a moment, she had kept reality at bay. She cannot bear to think of Matt and his casual ‘perhaps it’s for the best’. And as for Jacob? She cannot think of that tiny body, ringed with wires, clinging to life.

  ‘Tell me what you’ve been up to.’ Her voice is unnaturally bright. ‘I don’t suppose you’re managing to windsurf?’

  ‘Not a chance.’ He jerks his head at the cows in the field. ‘Too busy with all this.’

  ‘And this – it’s excellent.’ She takes a mouthful of the ice cream.

  ‘You like it?’ His face lightens.

  She nods. ‘It’s got such a delicate flavour. You should be selling it.’

  ‘Not got the money – or the time.’

  There is a pause. For a moment, he looks so like Fred it is uncanny. A blond version – with the same way of wrinkling his nose, and the same breadth and height. She blinks and sees her father repeat Tom’s mannerism before his face breaks into a smile. ‘Proper job,’ Fred tells her, playing up to the caricature of the Cornishman he was far from, really. ‘All right me ’ansom,’ he adds, winking. Then he stands up, tips a pre-teen Lucy over his shoulder and races down the field with her, a young Tom running in his wake.

  ‘How’s Mum?’ she says abruptly, blocking out the memories. ‘She seems a bit low. What’s up? I mean … beside worrying about me, and missing Dad.’

  Tom flushes.

  ‘What?’ She has a crushing sense that something big is going on and that she has been woefully naïve.

  ‘You really don’t know? She hasn’t told you yet?’

  ‘Told me what? She hasn’t got cancer, has she?’ Her mouth fills with a metallic taste.

  ‘No … nothing like that.’ He pauses, and she has a stronger-than-ever sense that she has been negligent: that a whole different reality has been going on while she has been absorbed with her problems. When he looks up, she sees he is close to tears.

  ‘We’ve got money worries. Big ones,’ Tom explains, looking down at his calloused fingers. ‘We’ve reached the £150,000 overdraft on the farm; and we’re having real difficulties paying it back.’

  It takes a second for the sum to make sense.

  ‘A hundred and fifty grand?’ She feels winded. ‘But how did it get so big?’

  ‘A bad harvest last year; sixteen thousand on replacing the pipes for the milking parlour. Then we lost six milkers this winter, and it cost us another eighteen to replace them,’ he says.

  ‘You knew about the restriction order?’

  She nods: one cow was found to have TB, and so the bull calves that would have been shifted at two weeks had to remain on the farm for an extra two months while they waited to discover the results of their tests.

  ‘We only managed to shift the bull calves in April, and we’d had the cost of feeding them for those extra months.

  ‘So … it’s just mounted up. Mum had a £100,000 overdraft anyway: the buffer we use over the winter and that the bank’s been happy to lend us, as long as we manage to cut into it each year. But we’ve had such a run of bad luck. And then, since March, the dairy’s dropped its prices to compete with the supermarkets.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she says.

  ‘You couldn’t be much help in London – and you’ve got your own problems.’

  ‘But I didn’t then, and I’d have done all I could to help if I’d known.’

  He smiles a small smile. ‘Not really much you could do, is there? It’s hard physical work that’s needed, and even that’s not going to be enough to shift this debt.’

  He pauses. ‘On top of that, we’ve another problem: this suggestion from Uncle Richard.’

  ‘What suggestion?’ She thinks of her mother’s younger brother, an accountant living in Guildford. Suave, suburban, materialistic; he left Cornwall at eighteen and has never shown any inclination to return.

  ‘He wants to sell the farm so it can be developed into luxury holiday accommodation with a play barn and swimming pool; put Granny in some sheltered accommodation in Wadebridge; give Mum one of the cottages, and keep one for himself.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I could go back to cheffing. An easier way to earn a living – and at least I’d get Flo off my back.’

  ‘But you don’t want to do that, do you?’

  ‘Nah … I might not have chosen to do this, but now I’m here I don’t want to be the one who can’t make a good job of it.’

  ‘Even if Flo’s unhappy?’ She thinks of his girlfriend, who seems frequently sulky.

  ‘She’ll come around to it.’ He sounds as if he is trying to convince …

  ‘Well, what about Mum? She won’t agree,
will she?’ Her chest feels tight.

  ‘It’ll break her heart, but she can see the benefits. She’s tired. Uncle Richard’s talking about getting over two million. More if we sell off all the land, far higher if he can organise the development. No more having to get up early to do the milking; or worrying about this overdraft; or about not being able to pay the council tax. She could take it easy if she could just forgive herself and not feel guilty about being the fifth-generation farmer who gave it all up; the one who lost the farm.

  ‘But the big sticking point is Granny. She just won’t go, and so, while she’s alive, I don’t see he can chuck her out. He might be a heartless bastard with absolutely no interest in offering any practical help down here, but I don’t think even he’s that much of a shit.’

  Lucy thinks of her grandmother and her determination to stay at the farm that seems as strong as ever. ‘She seems absolutely insistent on staying here,’ Lucy says. ‘Quite panicky about it.’

  ‘Yes. So the farm should be safe while she’s alive or lucid – unless he manages to bully her into giving him power of attorney. But when he and Mum inherit? Well, he’ll force Mum into it if the farm’s not successful – and he’ll probably persuade her anyway.’

  He pauses and presses his lips together. The studiedly offhand look he used to adopt as a little boy when trying to fight off tears.

  ‘Dada sad?’ Ava peers intently at her father, then reaches up to hug his neck.

  ‘Yes, it is sad, Ava.’ He loosens her grip a little. ‘Daddy grew up here, and Auntie Lucy. I don’t want you to miss out on this.’

  ‘Well – we’ll just have to make it a success then.’ Lucy feels suddenly, ridiculously, galvanised. ‘Show Uncle Richard it’s a farm worth hanging on to: a farm in which he might want to invest.’

  ‘I am trying!’ Tom is suddenly frustrated. ‘I’ve planted ten acres of thatching reed, this year. If the weather holds, it could bring in fifteen grand.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’

  ‘We’re in even deeper shit.’