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

by Vaughan, Sarah

  She peers out of the window. The sky is brightening. A rainbow bleeds into the watery sky. It feels like a cruel joke: a jibe from a force that will always get the better of them, will always threaten to ruin their business, unless they can develop a means of outwitting it. She sees their mountain of debt stretching higher again and imagines them moving out of the foothills only to slither back down the scree.

  ‘We have to convince Uncle Rich about the ice cream,’ she says, slowly. ‘We have to convince him that he should invest in the equipment – unless we think the bank will do so?’

  ‘Not a chance. I spoke to them only this morning.’ Her mother’s words flood out in a rush of breath.

  ‘Then he’s the one we need to work on. Find out that there’s sufficient demand among the farm shops and restaurants around here, and appeal to his better nature.’

  ‘Not seen much sign of that,’ Tom says.

  The plans arrive in the post the next morning. With exquisitely painful timing, the A3 envelope with proposals from an architect friend of Richard’s is delivered as Lucy comes back from milking.

  ‘Got an important-looking one for you here.’ The postman holds it deferentially like a tray of champagne.

  She glances at it, sees the franking of an architect’s firm, and feels her heart miss a beat.

  ‘Thanks, Sam, but I don’t think we want it.’

  He tilts his head to one side. ‘You mean you don’t want to take it? It’s addressed to your grandmother.’

  She looks at it again. At least her uncle still recognises Maggie as the farm’s owner: his moves to gain power of attorney or acquire the farm to circumvent inheritance tax, so far failing. ‘I don’t think she’ll want it either,’ she says.

  Sam looks at her shrewdly, eyes crinkling through a web of crow’s feet. She has the feeling he is suppressing a private joke. ‘Your grandmother’s very much her own lady, so I think I ought to ask her, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. Of course I’ll take it. Thank you. Though I suspect she’ll put it straight in the bin.’

  ‘Pity the fire’s not lit: best way of getting rid of it.’

  ‘I could always light one.’ Despite herself, she smiles.

  Her grandmother refuses to open it, and so Judith does that evening, once Maggie is safely out of the way.

  ‘Just thought you might like a look at these,’ Richard’s note says. ‘Just preliminary drafts. Very rough but they give us some idea of quite how extensive the farm estate is, and how many dwellings we could get out of it. No need to get back to me yet. Mull it over. I’ll be down in a couple of weeks to discuss them and see if there’s any way we could move on from here.’

  ‘Oh, he’s clever. He’s very, very clever.’ Judith lets out her breath and smiles as if half-admiring her brother’s chutzpah. ‘Just leaving it for us to “mull over”. Wearing us down gently, more like.’ She shakes her head.

  She puts the plans on the table, spreading them out so that her children can see them all. Despite herself, Lucy is drawn to them: intrigued by the neat, computer-generated images and the thought of the number of dwellings the architect has managed to conjure from the dairy, cottages, barns and old stables. Six, seven, eight.

  It is a neatly sanitised world: most dwellings with two or three bedrooms. Individual, lawned gardens, each with a barbecue and picnic bench. The tamarisk tree has been pulled up, and the avenue of blackthorn bushes: all evidence of the ferocious wind erased. She could imagine children racing over the still-retained cobbles, and loving couples admiring the view of the bay while toasting each other with chilled white wine.

  ‘He hasn’t touched the house.’ Tom points to the plans. Farmhouse to be retained for the family’s use, they stipulate.

  ‘The clever bugger.’ Judith whistles. ‘Or perhaps he does care about Mum’s happiness, just a bit.’

  ‘So, if the farmhouse remains, we could stay here?’ Tom frowns as his finger traces the drawings.

  ‘I suppose we could – but what would we do?’ says his mother. ‘All the outbuildings have been used, and there’s no milking parlour. Look, it would be pulled down, to make room for – what’s that? – A children’s play barn?’

  ‘So, we’d have a farmhouse but no farm.’

  ‘Think of how much they’d be worth though.’ Flo is staring at them, intrigued. ‘Eight properties with a view like this. They’ve got to be worth, what, over two million? And we could hire out the land, or even work it for someone else. And you’d have no money worries, would you? All those early starts. All that stress. You could go back to cheffing if you liked.’ She looks up at Tom, face alight with excitement, glimpsing the possibility of an easier life.

  Tom wipes his face with his hand, masking a conflicting array of emotions – irritation, exhaustion, perhaps even temptation. Judith pores over the drawings, her face flushed and tense. She and any future generations of Pethericks will be wiped out, as farmers, if they agree to these plans, and Lucy feels a sudden burst of fury on her behalf.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ she says, addressing Flo but encompassing them all. ‘We farm this land. And if Tom and Mum, not to mention Granny, want to remain here, not as householders but as farmers, we’ll try to continue to do so – until the bank refuses to let us. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Quite right,’ Judith says, though her voice breaks and her eyes flit back to the plans as though they are enticing. Tom, his spirit crushed in the last twenty-four hours, murmurs in agreement.

  It is hardly the resounding endorsement that Lucy wants to hear.

  Twenty

  Then: 18 August 1943, Cornwall

  Evelyn Retallick was busying herself in the kitchen, her back to her daughter. There was definitely something up. Her movements were swift, her posture stiff, her manner offhand. Perhaps she knew. She might just know. Three days she’d been home from Gwynnie’s and she seemed more watchful and suspicious than ever before, Maggie thought, as she scrutinised her. It had been impossible to meet Will, but whether it was because the men were still harvesting the crops or because Evelyn was keen to keep her from him, she just couldn’t tell.

  She needed to see him, though. She just wanted to be alone with him, to be enveloped by his arms, feel his firm body held against her. She longed for him to cup her breasts, as if gauging their weight, then dip his head and kiss them, his mouth hot on her skin. She thought of the last time they had met in the barn. His mouth had snaked from her neck to her collarbone, and then, as she caught her breath, he took her nipple in his mouth and bit it, gently. She had never experienced anything so arousing or felt so rebellious; she was teetering on the very cusp of adulthood, it seemed.

  A kiss on the lips would be enough, though, she thought, as she gathered together the enamel mugs and filled a pitcher with tea. A snatched kiss as she locked the hens in for the night, ever alert to Alice creeping up on them as they hid behind the bales of hay. Such kisses were always urgent, their bodies pressed together as if they had to squeeze the maximum sensation out of the shortest amount of time. She would feel the blades scratch against her hair, hear the hens scrape, the mice scrabble, and she could tell with just one kiss, no, with him pressed up against her against the bales, she could feel just how much she excited him.

  They hadn’t kissed since Evelyn had come back. Three whole days during which he had barely looked at her. He was already worried that Arthur knew. The older boy looked at her with a leer, his upper lip curling as his pale blue eyes looked her up and down. But then he’d always behaved in that way. We will just be careful, she told Will. Now: calm down and kiss me. No one need ever know.

  Now, though, she feared that perhaps he no longer wanted her? When they had kissed, she had sensed his desire, but, left unattended, had it withered away? How could it be that she was tormenting herself with the thought of the trace of his fingers, the touch of his tongue and lips, and he refused to make eye contact when she passed him the potatoes, or served him the leeks?
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  The only way she could think of meeting up with him, properly, with her mother back, was to engineer an after-dinner ramble: a walk along the beach at low tide, or better still, along the cliffs. The barley was still high further west, the sheaves soaking up each ray of sun, and if it was a little trampled, the neighbouring farmer would think little of it. Or perhaps they should find a spot on the very cliff’s edge, only spied by the circling seagulls. Or in the cleft of the rock – the cave beyond the cove, only accessible before the tide turned and swept in.

  She glanced at her mother, now drawing pasties from the oven. This stage of the harvest was nearly finished: the barley in the last field being cut and bound into sheaves today and tomorrow, then left in shocks to dry for the next ten days. They would be working flat-out tonight, but tomorrow? Tomorrow, she might just get the chance to see him.

  ‘I’ll take them for them, shall I?’ she asked her mother, gesturing to the pasties, fresh out of the oven. Evelyn straightened up and put down the hot tray.

  ‘Here are the cups. Don’t stay out in this heat. There’s so much to be done here.’ She leaned briefly against the kitchen table, a wave of exhaustion clouding her face.

  Out in the brilliant white sunshine, the men were working fast, gathering the sheaves left by the binder. The team of horses was uncomplaining. Heads down, they trawled the field, tails flicking the flies away.

  ‘Food – and drink,’ she called, stumbling a little under the weight of both. Her father raised his hand to indicate they should stop. James started towards her, but Will moved through the stubble faster, boots trampling it down, kicking up dust.

  ‘All right?’ He spoke in a whisper.

  ‘I need to see you,’ she said, her eyes on James, now ten yards from them. ‘Walk on the cliffs tomorrow if you’re finished here. Eight o’clock, after dinner? Meet you down the track?’

  She had worked out what to tell him this morning, practising how forward her proposal might seem.

  ‘Careful,’ she muttered, handing over a pasty and gesturing with her eyes behind him. ‘Here you go, James.’ Her voice became brighter as the herdsman caught up with them. ‘One big pasty and a flask of tea.’

  ‘Thank you kindly.’ James took them in his leathered hands.

  ‘I’ll leave these for Arthur and my father.’

  ‘Won’t you stay a bit?’

  ‘There’s too much to do,’ she faltered. And, aware that she was flushing, she rushed away.

  ‘I’m not sure why you need to go out now?’ Her mother peered at her over the top of the spectacles she now wore for reading.

  ‘It’s a beautiful evening … and I just wanted to stretch my legs.’

  Outside the heat of the day had eased to a gentle temperature, but the sky was a muted blue: white streaks of cloud slipped and faded. It would be glorious tomorrow and, in a couple of hours, the sky would turn a vibrant pinky gold as the hot ball of sun slid into the sea.

  Her mother took a sip of tea and glanced at Frenchman’s Creek lying in her lap, half-read and open. It was the first time she had sat down for days.

  ‘Well, take Alice with you, would you?’ Evelyn gestured to the younger girl, curled up in an armchair, engrossed in her own novel.

  ‘What was that?’ Alice raised her head, blue eyes shifting into focus as she dragged them from the page.

  ‘I said you’d enjoy a quick walk on the beach with Maggie, wouldn’t you?’ Evelyn encompassed both girls with a flinty smile.

  There was no point complaining, she knew; that would only increase her mother’s suspicions. And so: ‘Of course you can come,’ Maggie heard herself say.

  He looked beautiful when they stumbled upon him at the bottom of the track that led from the fields to the sand dunes, his face open in expectation until he saw that there were two of them there.

  ‘W–iiiiillll.’ Alice flung herself into his arms, excessive in her delight.

  ‘Hello, little sis.’ Over the top of her head, he raised an eyebrow at Maggie as if to ask what she was playing at.

  ‘Mother suggested Alice came when I said I needed a walk,’ she explained, her voice bright and brittle. Then: ‘What a surprise seeing you here.’

  He looked taken aback.

  ‘Perhaps the three of us could go for a walk,’ she improvised. ‘Out to the rock pools over there.’ She gestured towards the cove. ‘Or up onto the cliffs?’

  ‘We could explore the caves?’ Will caught on, and pointed to the very spot she had thought of.

  ‘I didn’t think we could reach them?’ Alice looked intrigued.

  ‘Only when the tide’s this low – and one’s a scramble.’

  ‘I don’t mind a scramble.’

  ‘Come on then,’ he said, taking the lead.

  The three of them set off across the sand, Maggie walking briskly, for she could not wait to shake off Alice. Her eyes scoured the view, wondering if a large rock would afford them some privacy and how they might grab just a few minutes on their own. Will now trailed behind, and Maggie felt an irrational stab of jealousy that his sister was monopolising his attention. Then she looked back at them and saw Alice’s beam as he flung an arm over her shoulders, and relented. The young girl gained little enough affection from her at the moment, so why should she resent her receiving some from Will?

  ‘Here they are!’ She had reached the first cave: smaller and deeper than she had remembered – a narrow crevice, really. Rivulets of condensation ran down the steep walls and pooled in the sinking sand at her feet. It was cool, verging on cold, with the sunlight so dramatically curbed, and it grew colder the deeper she went. A shaft of sunlight burst through the roof, towards the back of the cave, illuminating shards of broken mussel shells and slate on the ground, and catching on a stagnant pool of water. There was an insistent drip, drip, drip of moisture, pooling, and a pungent tang of discarded seaweed and rotting fish.

  Instinctively, she called out: ‘Hellooooo.’ The sound ricocheted, reverberated back at her. ‘Oooooo’ went the echo, and she felt – though it must have been the cold – a distinct shiver run up her spine.

  She could think of better spots for a romantic tryst, but at least it was private. A sliver cut into the cliff, only visited, at low tide, by a rare, adventurous child: at high tide, by seagulls and fish. Above her, walkers could be tramping, skylarks hovering, the grass seething with a mass of insects – and none of them would know of the lovers hidden underneath.

  ‘Eurrgh. What’s that smell?’ Alice’s voice reached her before she did. The girl, silhouetted against the beach, came towards her.

  Maggie gestured at a large cod, lying beached by the tide. A fly buzzed around the broken gills, and sand collected over his dulled eyeball. Alice – so unsentimental, now, about the farm animals being killed – was still squeamish about dead fish.

  ‘It’s horrid. And this is creepy.’ She glanced around the cave, her face guarded and fearful.

  ‘I think it’s rather peaceful,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Let’s go out into the sunshine. I’m going back to the rock pools.’ Alice ran out into the sunshine and into her brother. ‘Don’t go in, Will. It’s horrid in there.’

  ‘I just want to see if there are any stalactites,’ he said, and Maggie wondered at the ease with which he, too, was able to lie to Alice. She felt a pang of guilt at their deception, quickly overridden by a desire to touch him as he brushed past her in the cave.

  Nevertheless, she had a sudden premonition that perhaps she shouldn’t let Alice wander off.

  ‘You won’t go to the other cave without us, will you?’ she called out to her from the cave’s entrance. ‘It’s tricky to clamber up to it: we’ll have to show you how to get in.’

  Alice looked at her, bemused. Her big, forget-me-not-blue eyes fixed on her face, unsmiling. She blinked. ‘I was just going to rock-pool.’

  ‘Well don’t go far.’ She looked up the beach to check. ‘The tide’s turned. It will reach here soon – and the caves even quick
er.’

  ‘But you won’t be long?’ Alice suddenly looked younger than her twelve years.

  ‘No. A couple of minutes.’ She flushed at the thought that she might appear transparent. ‘That’s all. Then, we’ll go off and explore together, I promise.’

  He was waiting for her as soon as she drew back into the cool of the cave.

  ‘Oh, I’ve missed you!’ The words spilled from her.

  He silenced her with a kiss.

  ‘Come here.’ He pulled her towards him, her skirt scrunching up as he held her bottom with one hand and ran his fingers through her hair with the other. He paused and traced the curve of her cheek, his finger lingering on her lip until she couldn’t help but kiss it. His eyes darkened with such a frank admission of desire that she had to look away.

  He began to nuzzle her neck – his nose and lips buffeting her nape, her earlobe, her collarbone – and she felt the intoxicating shivers begin. One hand crept over her breast and she pressed against him, as if to siphon off his heat and excitement. She heard her breath catch as his kisses became more urgent again.

  ‘We mustn’t be too long.’ She could feel that time might become suspended here in this secret slit in the cliffs, where all was hidden away.

  ‘We’ve plenty of time.’ He looked at her enquiringly for a moment; then, eyes still on hers, began to unbutton the top of her dress.

  ‘Here.’ She guided his hand into her brassiere, looking straight at him, though she could feel herself blushing. In the gloom, he barely seemed to notice, or perhaps he wasn’t as preoccupied as her with shame.