‘Here – you’re really shivering. Take this.’ He pulls off his hoodie and puts it over her head. The heavy weight cocoons her as he pulls it over her shoulders, her arms and waist. The inside of the fleece is warm with his body heat, and she moves it over her lips, feeling its softness. It smells of washing powder, of salt, and of him.
‘We’re going to get properly wet – come on.’ He resumes walking as they hear a closer roll of thunder.
‘Thank you,’ she manages. ‘That’s much better.’ And she catches up with him, half-running on the edge of the field as she matches his pace.
‘You looked deep in thought when you were floating there,’ he says.
‘Oh – I just had some life stuff to think about.’
‘Sounds heavy.’
‘Something like that.’ She cannot begin to talk about it.
‘Do you want to hear something to cheer you up, then?’
‘Please!’ Her reply comes out in a rush, the tension held inside her for the past hour beginning to ease.
‘It’s about the ice cream. We’d love to stock it at Tredinnick. We’ll take forty half-litre tubs a week, in season; not sure how much out of season.’
She stops, despite the rain starting to fall more heavily, trying to readjust her emotions and shake off thoughts of death. He wants to stock the ice cream. The suggestion seems bizarre: so left-field and unexpected that she does not know what to say. Ice cream? They want to stock their ice cream?
‘That’s fantastic. Thank you,’ she manages, eventually.
He beams, then, to her frustration, resumes walking, briskly. ‘I’ve also got a friend whose dad owns a string of delis, Kernow’s, throughout London. She’s a buyer for him, is down at the moment and would love to meet to discuss a possible order, too.’
She stumbles on, the straw whipping her bare shins, nettles stinging her ankles, bemused by further possible good news; almost incapable of taking it in.
‘What sort of quantity is she thinking of?’ She tries to switch her brain into gear.
‘Well, I’d have thought you’d need one of you making it full-time. It’s early days, but Alex was talking about wanting up to 600 half-litre tubs a week if it proves successful.’
She catches him up, her mind reeling. This is a business-changing figure. The sort of news that might confound Uncle Richard and curb his development scheme. She tries to calculate the profit on 600 tubs at £3.95 each, but it’s beyond her at the moment, so befuddled is she by the switch in emotions and the image of a farm that could be a success.
‘Anyway,’ he says, as he starts to jog up the last field, the rain gathering in momentum and falling thick and fast now. ‘Will you come and talk to her? You and Tom? Meet us for a drink tomorrow evening? The Wreckers. Say, eight-thirty?’
They have reached the yard, and splatter through freshly wet muck to the kitchen. The rain is pounding, the air dense with the smell of soaked grass, crushed camomile and vetch.
They huddle inside the porch, and finally she grins up at him, as the rain falls from heaven to earth: grey sheets that section them off and contain them in the cool, intimate space between the yard and kitchen door. He is so close she can see the hairs on his forearm, and a small scar on the underneath of his chin from when he gashed it as a kid, rock-pooling with Tom. He smells of salt and earth and when he smiles at her she lets herself believe that, perhaps, the farm’s fortunes might be changing.
‘Eight-thirty it is,’ she says.
They meet the next evening, as promised. Alex is petite, smartly dressed and classically beautiful – the sort of woman who would usually make Lucy wary, were it not for the fact she is warm and seems so interested in them.
At the next table outside the pub, a family are making the most of a balmy evening: the parents drinking cold white wine while their children – two boys and a girl – devour bags of crisps. Salty-haired, the boys start crabbing over the harbour wall: fixing pieces of bacon fat to lines and tossing them into the dark green gloom to entice crabs from the claggy algae.
‘They’ll be lucky to find anything in there,’ Alex says.
But: ‘Look, Dad, look. We’ve got a big one!’ Within minutes there is a tug on a line and the older boy is scrabbling to pull it up.
‘Well done, Oscar,’ says his father.
‘That’s not fair. I want one too,’ the little sister clamours as the second brother also draws up a crab and unhooks it into his bucket.
‘Here, you can help.’ Her big brother hands over the line as he inspects his catch. His sister – who can’t be more than four – sits patiently on the side of the harbour, waiting for the tell-tale tug to happen again.
Their excitement infects those around them. Lucy can see that Tom is just dying to peer into the bucket or join in, as he did as a boy. Ben is itching to do so, too.
‘Can we have a look?’ he asks, approaching the trio, and glancing at their parents first for approval. ‘Cor. He’s massive. You could almost eat him.’
‘And Milo’s got a good one.’ Oscar proffers his brother’s bucket, approval making him generous, both boys visibly swelling with pride.
‘Do you have children?’ Alex is watching her watching them.
‘Oh no. I’ve left Tom to supply the grandchildren.’ Lucy trots out her usual line.
‘But you’re married?’ Alex probes her.
‘Yes. Err, yes, I am. Sort of.’ She looks away as she says this and catches Ben’s eye.
‘I didn’t realise you were married. You don’t wear a ring,’ he says.
She looks down at her long fingers, tanned brown by the sun.
‘No, I don’t,’ she replies, not knowing what else to say. She feels dishonest for not mentioning this fact, surprised that Tom hadn’t told him. She looks directly at him. ‘It’s a bit complicated.’
‘Shall we talk about the proposal?’ Alex rescues her. The quantities she suggests are impressive. The eight Kernow’s delis would want to stock fifty litres a week each, at first, with a choice of flavours. The ice cream would need to be properly branded and marketed, and the flavours developed and finessed.
Tom becomes animated as he discusses possible options: rhubarb and custard; clotted cream and blackcurrant; raspberry with home-made meringue. Watching him, Lucy realises that she hasn’t seen him so excited for years: not since he started his cheffing, when he was doing what he loved and was infatuated with Flo. Not since their dad died.
‘We’ll need more staff though, if we’re to pull this off,’ he is saying to Ben. ‘I doubt Flo will come on board: she needs some distance from the farm. And obviously we won’t have Lucy.’
‘Why won’t you have Lucy?’ Ben looks startled.
‘Well, she’s only here until the end of the season. She’ll be back working at her hospital in September.’ Tom smiles at her, repeating the line she has given anyone who is interested. ‘And then, obviously, she won’t be here next year.’
The fact lands on the table between them, amid the finished peanut packets and their glasses. Lucy will have left the area in less than a month, once the heat of the summer has eased and the harvest has been gathered in. As the holiday season comes to a close and the Milos and Oscars return to school. As the ploughing and harrowing, the sowing and the maintenance resumes, as Cornwall becomes more desolate and less golden, Lucy will be living her old life, three hundred miles away.
‘I don’t have to go.’ The words slip out without her thinking. She looks at her brother.
Surprise, and then pity, flit across his face.
‘Probably a conversation for another time,’ he says with a nod, a warning – as if she needed it – to go no further. He downs his second pint, and she imagines his brain whirring as he works out how to protect his big sister from revealing more about her career absence, not to mention her marriage, than she intends.
‘Lots to think about,’ he says, with a businesslike nod to Ben and Alex. ‘I’m completely up for it. We just need to think about
logistics. When we can get a shed prepared for the equipment; sourcing the machines – and persuading the bank, or possibly my uncle if you can give us this commitment in writing, to agree to a loan.’
‘And do look into employing someone else,’ says Ben, with an easy smile.
‘Exactly – next year at least,’ Tom says, and Lucy feels an intense sadness. This was an idea she had worked on and pushed him into pursuing, and she does not want to be sidelined at this point. Why would she be embroiled in the bustle of London, away from those she loves – struggling to make a relationship work, terrified of having to cannulate a tiny baby – while all this is happening here? Her throat thickens and she feels, childishly, as if she might cry.
‘There’s lots to be sorted – but it’s all achievable,’ Ben says. She can feel his eyes on her and knows that, if she looks at him, she might betray some of the emotions battling inside her: frustration, confusion, humiliation, perhaps even, perturbingly, just a flicker of desire.
‘Yes,’ she manages, getting up and managing a smile she hopes seems confident and collected to Alex. ‘There’s an awful lot to think about.’
Twenty-eight
Then: 18 March 1944, Cornwall
The lambing shed was cold. Seven in the morning, and outside the day was only just breaking. The grass was crisp with frost, the air tinged with dew. Inside, the barn was filled with the scent of straw and iodine. And something else: the iron-rich smell of blood as three ewes gave birth in quick succession: six lambs tumbling out in a confusion of cords and slippery sacs and, finally – once the lambs had started suckling – each ewe’s plum-red placenta.
‘Wait for one and they all come at once,’ said Uncle Joe, as he and Alice watched the ewe which had birthed the triplets. The weakest, a female and a scrap compared to its sturdier brothers, shivered as it lay in the trampled straw.
‘Come here.’ The farmer picked up the lamb and pushed it right under the ewe’s nose, then watched, brow furrowing for a second, as the mother nudged it to test if it was hers and bleated softly, as if murmuring a hello. The ewe began giving it small, quick licks, cleaning the mucus away, and, finally, the lamb tried to stand – foundering on bandied legs. The ewe nuzzled her young again, seemingly more affectionate. Stumbling, the lamb managed to find her teat and then, tentatively, began to suck.
Uncle Joe, meanwhile, had turned to the other two lambs and picked up the fatter male; then turned to the scene of the next birthing, where the ewe, a seasoned mother, had had just the one lamb. With a broad hand, he scooped up some of the bloodied musk spilling from the sheep and smeared it on the plump triplet, then thrust it towards the second ewe and waited for her to smell it.
‘Go on.’ His encouragement was low but intense.
‘What? Why?’ Alice, up since four to watch her first lambing, couldn’t quite understand what he was doing.
‘We do it with triplets. Take the sturdiest off and give it to one who’s had a singleton if they’ve lambed close enough together. Best way of making sure the runt survives.’
He gestured to the pitiful lamb, still quivering with cold as it sucked. Its folds of skin were sticky and wet, its fleece thin and damp from its birthing. ‘Poor little blighter doesn’t stand much of a chance, if we don’t help it like this.’
‘It’s the kindest thing,’ he went on. ‘You have to do it with the bigger lambs: more likely to get over the shock of fostering. It’s like with humans. Sometimes it’s necessary for the child to be taken from its mother.’
‘Like Will and me.’ She looked down as she said it.
The farmer looked uncomfortable and pulled at his earlobe. ‘Well, these are unusual times. Special circumstances, you might say.’
They continued to watch the ousted lamb, now being licked clean by the second ewe, apparently fooled by the farmer’s deception. The lamb nuzzled in, gleaning warmth from its foster mother, whose own lamb began to suckle away.
For a moment, all was quiet, the drama of the lambings over as quickly as it started: three families of sheep, each ewe, now, with twins. Yet Alice couldn’t shake away the thought of the rapid adoption. The lamb, befuddled by birth, might accept it, but what of the ewe whose sturdiest lamb had gone? Did she realise what had happened? And when she baaed her desperate, nasal bleat in the field, months later, would she be calling for her missing lamb?
‘Your brother’s doing well, you know.’ Uncle Joe, usually a quiet man, seemed keen to talk, and she made sure she listened. Will couldn’t be mentioned around Aunt Evelyn, and any snippets of news came from the farmer and were sparsely distributed: as rare as a double-yolked egg.
She knew the farm he was working on now, for instance – Farmer Eddy’s at Polcarrow – but not if he missed them, or if he even thought about her. Her throat tightened at the thought that he might be lonely, and then at the thought that he might not be.
‘I saw him and Farmer Eddy at market on Tuesday. He looked the proper farmer. Says he’s taken to the bigger farm.’
‘That’s good.’ Alice could barely speak. Her family had shrunk – William and Annie only visiting the once, when her father had leave; the twins in Wadebridge, though they might have been in Devon for the little she saw them. It was over seven months since Will’s departure but it still felt raw.
‘He misses you.’ He half-coughed the words.
‘I miss him too.’
‘Ahhh … yes.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Well. I’m sorry.’
Alice looked at him in surprise. Was he apologising? Adults didn’t do that sort of thing. For a moment, she wished he was her father and she could sidle up to him for a hug – but a light ruffling of the hair was the only affection he had ever shown her, and then only when she was younger. She swallowed, forcing down a hard lump at the back of her throat. She had felt so lonely since Will had gone. Maggie was neutral, at best; Aunt Evelyn, distant; Joanna, busy. And so it was the animals she turned to for comfort: Cocoa the kitten; Fly, the sheepdog; and a baby rabbit she had adopted, down by the broom bushes, who, quivering, would let her stroke its fur.
They couldn’t make up for Will, though. She turned away from the farmer and the silence swelled as she tried to work out what she might say to him. The words weighed on her tongue; she could almost taste them. Did you send Will away because of what I told Auntie Evelyn? Is it really my fault, like Maggie says?
A sudden flurry on the other side of the shed. A commotion.
‘She’s in trouble.’ Arthur, red in the face and apparently sweating, was bent over a ewe that was trying to stand.
‘Bloody hell.’ For a big man, the farmer moved swiftly, crossing the barn in three long strides, away from Alice and over to the ewe, cordoned off in the corner by a clump of bales.
A lamb’s head was poking out of the rear of the sheep, bulging grotesquely as the sheep strained to push.
‘Push it back in now; work against the contractions,’ Uncle Joe barked at Arthur.
The boy tried to push the head back inside, and the ewe stamped, panicking.
‘Here.’ The farmer took over, placing his large hand over the head and pushing against the ewe, which stumbled and bleated.
‘Got to get it in quick or it’ll suffocate,’ he panted, waiting for her contraction to be over. ‘One more time girl,’ he tried to reassure her as he pressed firmly again.
Alice held her breath. Uncle Joe strained, his arm slipped inside the sheep with the lamb’s head and he grimaced.
‘Now got to find the front legs and pull them through.’
He rummaged, face clenched in concentration; hand rearranging limbs inside the ewe’s womb.
‘Think there are three in here.’ His eyes narrowed with the effort of working it out.
‘Three?’ Arthur sounded bewildered.
‘I can’t work out these hooves.’
Alice couldn’t look at the rear end of the ewe, but watched her face, those eyes rolling with panic, head held fast by James.
‘We knew she was big
.’ The farmer seemed to be trying to work out how this multiple birth could have gone unnoticed.
‘Not this big,’ Arthur murmured.
‘Bugger, I’ve got one of each.’ Uncle Joe, his arm halfway inside the sheep now, seemed to have forgotten Alice. ‘Damn,’ he spat, and his brow furrowed deeper as he pulled.
Then: ‘That’s it.’ He held one leg in his hand. ‘Other’s bent back. She should be able to get it out now.’
They paused. The ewe pushed, and the large lamb, head swollen, was forced out onto the straw.
‘Now just got to get the other two,’ said Uncle Joe, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead and bending down on all fours.
But the ewe was looking exhausted, and had slumped back down as if unable to cope with the strain.
Uncle Joe reinserted his hand to find the forelegs of the next lamb.
‘’Tis a bugger: they keep slipping back.’
The sheep bleated, eyes rolling in panic.
‘Will I get the vet?’ said James.
Uncle Joe grunted and carried on rummaging.
‘Think one has the cord around it.’ He looked at his herdsman, his face bleak. ‘Perhaps you ought … Alice, go back to the house,’ the farmer barked. ‘Help with the breakfast or something. No need for you to be out here.’
‘But I want to stay …’
‘Alice.’ She saw a glint of steel: a hint of the man who could shoot a cow he had reared from a calf, or kill foxes or badgers without a moment’s hesitation, who would snare magpies or drown kittens.
‘Yes, of course.’ She got up quickly and ran to the farmhouse, aware that she was being protected from something she might not want to see.
Twenty-nine
Then: 18 April 1944, Cornwall
The sensation was unlike anything she had ever experienced. A curious tightening, and then a deep, bowel-twisting throb of pain.
Maggie leaned against her wrought-iron bedframe, her knuckles whitening as she gripped it and bit down on her bottom lip. I mustn’t make a noise. Must keep this secret, but oh! The throb of pain came again: sharper this time. More acute. A stab of a knife, not a general, discontented grumbling. She could see her stomach tense, then quiver, and feel the baby push against her, no longer willing to be contained.
The Farm at the Edge of the World : A Novel (2016) Page 19