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

by Vaughan, Sarah

  ‘Couldn’t sleep?’ He takes a final gulp from his mug and gestures that she should hurry up and drink hers. Outside, the heavy yielders – the cows that have had their calves most recently and will produce the greatest amount of milk – are waiting to be herded into their stalls for the milking to begin.

  ‘Something like that,’ she says and sips her drink, almost orange in colour and sweet with a spoonful of sugar. ‘That’s rank.’

  ‘Thought you might need some energy.’

  She wonders if he heard them, though the walls are thick, but his expression is unreadable. She nods, suddenly bad-tempered.

  ‘Shall we just get on with it?’

  The cows file into their stalls: two lines of nine flanking the sides of the herringbone parlour. Tom guides them in with a cry of ‘home, home, home’, while she sprays their udders with iodine and fits the quartet of cups to each teat. The feed rattles down the hoppers and the cattle lower their heads. The milk drips down the tubes. The next two lines are ushered in.

  There is something so reassuring about this, she realises: this endless cycle of creation and recreation that will carry on despite individual cows dying. Despite, even, the horror of their dad’s death. It soothes her, this continuity: the rhythm grounding her like the steady beat of a heart. In London, the beat is light and quick: a flutter that peaks then falls, jittering her up, unable to sustain her. She breathes in the rich stench of manure and warm cow; of hay and ammonia. She is Skylark. She belongs here.

  ‘You all right?’

  Tom, back from leading the next line of cows, poses the question, looking uncomfortable. ‘Just found a text from Flo last night at the restaurant … She wasn’t spying … but she said it didn’t look as if you were having that good a time?’

  She shakes her head, infuriated yet touched that they are concerned with her well-being. Her eyes smart with tears.

  ‘Lucy.’ Tom puts down the hose he had picked up to sluice the floor, and turns to face her. ‘What are you doing with him?’

  ‘Not sure I’m going to be with him much longer.’ It is the first time she has articulated this.

  ‘Really?’ He raises an eyebrow.

  ‘I just don’t think I can do any of it any more – my marriage, London, my career.’ He pulls her towards him and she finds herself crying, buried away in the safety of his chest. She smells straw and manure and the distinct scent of Petherick male that reminds her so much of her father. For one long moment, she lets herself believe that she is being held by him.

  Eventually she pulls away, wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve and tries to get a grip.

  ‘I keep thinking of Granny’s advice. She warned me about regret: not grabbing a second chance if I was offered it. Lost love can be so painful. That and wondering what might have been. That’s what she said. She was talking about her first love, and the baby that was taken away. But I can’t make her feelings fit with mine for Matt. I can’t love him in the way she loved Will. And he was unfaithful to me.’ Her voice breaks. ‘Whatever he says now, he crossed a line and wanted someone else. And I can see that that was actually because we weren’t quite right, all along. If we split up, I just don’t think I’ll feel that intense regret.’

  Tom strokes her hair, squeezes her tightly, his face flushed and troubled.

  ‘It’s a lot to give up, a long-term relationship. Might mean you don’t have your own Ava? I mean,’ he tries to lighten the mood, though there’s an edge to his comment, ‘you are getting on a bit.’

  ‘It might mean being alone, for ever.’ She looks at him, baldly. ‘Yes, I know. No husband. No children. But better that and be happy in myself, rather than being stuck in a relationship in which I don’t want to be.

  ‘When I think about regret,’ she adds, easing away from his hold, calming her voice, ‘I wonder what I’d regret most: giving up Matt or giving up on this new life here, helping to create a brighter future, being true to me.’

  ‘And?’ Tom asks, though he must know the answer.

  ‘The farm wins,’ she says. ‘When I ask myself the question, Skylark wins. Every time.’

  In the end, Matt makes it easy for her. When she returns from milking, he is waiting for her in the bedroom: the bed made, fully dressed.

  ‘I’ve made a decision,’ she says.

  ‘Are you coming back in a fortnight?’

  ‘I’ll come and collect my stuff,’ she says, and it is a relief to state this so frankly. ‘But I’m not coming back permanently.’

  He nods, taking in the finality of what she is saying.

  ‘You’ve never really wanted me, have you?’ he says, after a while. His voice is flat and without malice, though the hurt seeps out anyway.

  ‘Of course I have!’ She sits down next to him, hoping she sounds sincere, for she knows they were passionate once, albeit briefly. ‘What makes you say that?’

  He shrugs. ‘I was the safe option. Your friend. The one you turned to after all those disastrous boyfriends; the one your dad liked. I’m not stupid.’ He smiles, rueful. ‘Think I always knew I was lucky to have you as long as I did.’

  ‘Oh, Matt.’ She puts an arm round him. Her cheek rests against his shoulder, soft skin resting against angular bone. He doesn’t lift his arm and pull her to him as she expected, and she moves away, awkward. ‘Well, I didn’t think that, if it’s any consolation,’ she says.

  The smile he returns is taut, his lips stretching briefly. He leans forward and looks at the floorboards, elbows resting on his knees. They seem to have accepted that it is over, and she feels an acute sadness but also, and more clearly, a strong sense of relief. Neither of them is fighting to make things better, and that seems to clarify things: to make it easier. Even at the very end, they do not feel sufficiently strongly to fight for their marriage to continue. They are resigned to it, all passion spent.

  ‘It was always an issue, this place, wasn’t it?’ he adds, looking at her, and he seems to be on a roll now, determined to list the problems at the heart of their relationship. ‘Your heart’s here and you’re happier, more contented, than you’ve ever seemed in London, whereas I know I just couldn’t live here.’

  He glances at the window, framing the rolling expanse of cornfield. ‘I couldn’t think of anything worse than all this …’ he gestures, ‘… openness. Lovely now when the sun shines, but I just find it so bleak and lonely, so, well, boring for most of the year.

  ‘We’ve hardly been love’s young dream, either, have we, these past few months? Or the past couple of years. It’s not great for your ego. Or your well-being. To know your wife doesn’t want you.’ He pauses. ‘Well, you’re a free agent, now. You can go after anyone you want. Even that Ben bloke,’ he says.

  The suggestion takes her by surprise. And she realises that, incredibly, he wants to be reassured.

  ‘That’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, Matt. And I’ve told you: nothing’s happened.’

  ‘But you’d like it to?’

  ‘No!’ Even as she says it, she wonders if she is lying.

  ‘Do me the justice of being honest.’

  ‘No,’ she repeats. ‘Actually, I’ve got so much on at the moment – so much to think about: Dad, Granny, us – that sex is the last thing I need.’

  His breath comes out in one long sigh. Perhaps he is remembering last night, and her apparent enthusiasm. He gets up off the bed and looks down at her. It takes a while for her to realise that he is waiting, just in case there is a chance she might change her mind.

  ‘When I go, that’s it.’ He looks at the floor, then back at her. ‘So I’m going to check one last time: are you sure you don’t want to make another go of it?’

  There is a flicker of hope in his eyes.

  ‘No. I don’t,’ she says. ‘But that’s got nothing to do with anyone else, and more to do with me realising who I am and what I need.’

  It is important she is clear on this. That their ending is not just because of Suzi, or even Ben, bu
t because their differences seem insurmountable.

  ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  ‘So am I,’ he says.

  Forty-two

  Now: 29 August 2014, Cornwall

  Lucy sits in the garden of Yard Cottage, waiting for Mrs Coates to stop fussing with the teapot. The elderly woman pours milk and then a stream of thick, dark tea.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any sugar,’ she says, apologetically.

  ‘Really, Mrs Coates. It’s fine.’ Lucy is determined to befriend her and not reveal her frustration that she has waited seventy years to confess her secret.

  ‘Oh.’ The elderly woman flushes. ‘Call me Alice, please.’

  It is six hours since Matt left, and Lucy is sitting in this cottage garden because she has been dwelling on regret.

  Her grandmother’s refusal to risk finding out about Jeremiah, and her stubbornness in not talking to Alice, now seems more tragic than foolish. Their guest is leaving in two days – having already extended her stay by another three – and when she goes, the chance of any reunion, or reconciliation, will disappear with her. If there is any possibility of a happy ending – or even some closure – then this is the time to grasp it. She does not want Maggie to be left wondering what might have been.

  ‘I expect you want to know why I came back now – after all this time.’ Alice looks across at Lucy, seemingly calmer now that she is sitting.

  ‘I think my grandmother feels unsettled by why you’ve decided to return now; and well, angry. But we – my mum, brother and I – are really grateful. We’d like to help find Jeremiah,’ Lucy says.

  Alice smiles, her thin lips dissolving into a brave wobble, but her hands fidget: her right thumb stroking her left one, over and over, in a nervous tic.

  ‘I should have come years ago. But I had a reason for not being able to bear thinking about what happened. It was so traumatic that I think I managed to convince myself that what I did was, if not excusable, then understandable because of it.

  ‘Then, just after Christmas, my sister died. She was eighty-five: younger than your grandmother. And Pam’s death shook me more than all my other siblings – well, apart from Will’s. Made me realise that perhaps I’d become complacent. I’d always assumed I had time to put things right, you see. But death – and illness – makes you realise that, perhaps, you haven’t time.

  ‘I had some bad news myself then – no, really; it’s nothing – but it shocked me into realising that if I was going to track down your grandmother’s baby, well, I had better get on with it.’

  She looks down at her lap then, and her disappointment is almost tangible. Her chirpy tone fades. ‘I have one more address left to visit, which I’ll do tomorrow. If it isn’t his, well, I don’t know what more I can do. Perhaps, if you’d be so kind, you might help me – and carry on the search?’

  She gets up and moves back into the house. For a moment, Lucy wonders if this is the end of the conversation. There was a finality to Alice’s admission that she hasn’t found Jeremiah. She waits, thinking of her frailty and the greyness that seems to mask her face. She has traipsed all over the moor, her grandmother said, and is now knocking on doors across Cornwall. No wonder, at eighty-three, she looks fatigued.

  She comes back into the garden, however, clutching what looks like a letter: a cheap white envelope, with an address scrawled in a scratched and spidery hand.

  ‘I was also prompted by this,’ she says, putting it down on the table. The envelope, soiled with dust and with a crease down its middle, is addressed, in blue fountain pen, to Maggie Retallick: Skylark Farm, Trecothan, north Cornwall. There is no stamp and no postmark on it.

  ‘It’s from my brother, Will. Written, as you can see, to your grandmother. I found it in some papers in Pam’s attic when I was sorting through her effects earlier this year.’

  Lucy gives a shiver. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Oh. I haven’t opened it.’ She looks shocked. ‘That wouldn’t be right. I wanted to give it to your grandmother if I couldn’t find her son. I’d have given it to her before now – only she was so angry, so distressed, I didn’t want to risk her not reading it properly.’

  Lucy touches the envelope, stroking the lettering, puzzling over the crease. Perhaps it was folded and kept in his breast pocket: warm and safe, next to his heart? There must be a reason he never found a stamp or a postbox for what surely must have been a love letter? She tries to imagine its secret contents; itches to ease the envelope apart.

  ‘I don’t understand why it wasn’t sent. Did he change his mind?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Why did your sister have it?’

  ‘It was in a bundle of letters belonging to my mother. She must have left them to Pam when she died.’

  ‘Why would your mother have it?’

  ‘I suppose it must have been in his things back at home – or perhaps he was carrying it when he died.’

  Lucy looks at the envelope once again, trying to envisage its history.

  ‘Do you know where your brother was killed?’

  ‘In the Aldwych.’ Alice’s voice is quiet. ‘Outside Bush House. He had just stepped out, safe, and a pane of glass sliced through him.’ She pauses as if imagining the horror of the moment, then adds, more brightly: ‘Do you know the place?’

  She does. She had once gone out with a history student from King’s, based on the Strand, and he had walked her along the curved street and pointed out the shrapnel lodged in the side of the building. A fact – recited in Henry’s animated, adenoidal voice – swims up from the depths of her memory.

  ‘Did you know that there was a post office, there, on the ground floor of Bush House? Do you think,’ she tastes the words as her mind catches up with the idea, ‘he might have been queuing up to post this when he died?’

  Alice is very still. ‘Well, yes. I suppose it’s possible,’ she says.

  The colour has gone from her cheeks, but she has become more animated.

  ‘I did write to him, you see. In the May, once I’d moved to St Agnes, telling him about the baby.’

  ‘You told him he was the father?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but I told him Maggie had had a baby, and I asked him to come and help. I thought he might be able to help find the farm where I’d taken the baby; and help me get him back for Maggie. I wanted, and it sounds so childish, to try to make things right.’

  ‘So perhaps this letter to Maggie is an apology – or a promise to come and help her?’ Lucy is excited.

  ‘I just don’t know.’ Her pale blue eyes start to water. ‘I wrote to him at the Eddys’ once I was with my new family, but I never heard from him. After he died, I learned that he had moved to London in the early May – and so I assumed he had never received it. I never thought it might have been forwarded. And when it occurred to me, much later, as an adult, my mother had dementia and there was no one to ask.’

  Lucy sits, trying to piece together a jigsaw of possibilities, the parts almost fitting – but not quite.

  ‘If he had received your letter, that might explain why your mother never sent this letter. She might not have wanted him to admit to being a father; might have wanted to protect him from my great-grandparents’ rage.’

  ‘I don’t think she’d have sent it anyway. She knew he loved this farm, and she blamed your great-grandmother for sending him away. It sounds ludicrous, but as far as she saw it, they were indirectly responsible for his death. And I think she loved him more than any of us realised at the time. I don’t think she could have passed any memento of his on – certainly not if it was on him when he died. But perhaps she couldn’t bear to look at it either. And so it was stored, jumbled up with the other letters, for years.’

  Alice strokes the envelope, tracing her brother’s writing with her right hand, then hands it back to Lucy.

  ‘I admit I’m intrigued to know what it says. It would be lovely if it brought your grandmother some small happiness. Please. Could you give it
to her, from me?’

  Maggie sits on her bench, underneath the crab apple tree, holding the letter. One finger traces the scrawl of the writing as she sees his slim fingers forming the words.

  So he had written to her. He hadn’t forgotten her, as she had always half-feared, or passed her over for somebody else. The buxom Land Girl had been a figment of her imagination. And he had loved her. She finds the crucial phrase. I love you. There, I have said it. For a moment she imagines him setting down the feeling: painfully self-conscious, wishing he could tell her in person.

  She rereads that crucial phrase. Ridiculous that this should matter, after all these years. But, oh, how it does! She looks at the blue ink coursing over the once-white sheet of paper, and feels her heart strain with joy.

  I love you. There, I have said it.

  And what more needed to be said? I love you was all anyone needed to hear. And though Edward had told her, and her children and grandchildren over the years, still this elusive I love you is the one that has always mattered. The one she had never heard. For Will had never said it, despite her whispering it into his hair as they stood, clamped together, in the hay barn. I love you, I love you. Her voice had been savage, the knowledge shocking. I love you, Will.

  A smile plays across her lips, floods her face. Will Cooke may have been too shy to say it, but he had loved her just as she had hoped, all along.

  He had wanted to be with her, too. She scans the lines to double-check, but yes, he says it here. He wanted to come down to Cornwall and – oh! – he wanted to help find their child. Her throat constricts. What a waste. What a bloody waste! He would have come down if he had managed to send this letter, for she would have replied with a great, heartfelt yes. If he hadn’t been caught in the aftermath of a bomb. If he hadn’t been there, trying to send her this letter, they would have been together. A familiar refrain starts up: he wouldn’t have died if he had stayed, safe in Cornwall, if he had never been sent from the farm.

  She tries to imagine it. For one indulgent moment she forgets Edward; forgets Judith and Richard; Tom, Lucy and Ava – and tries to envisage that longed-for future with Will and her first, abandoned child.