The van was drawing in to the farmyard. There were some shallow outhouses made from red bricks and corrugated iron and a block of stables in the distance. There were two large barns, one of which had been painted blue and the other of which had been painted white but so long ago that the colour was flecked and faded and both barns were now for the most part the colour of metal in rain. The tall doors of the barn had been cast wide open to give the men light in which to work.
The man’s name was Gary. He told us as we were getting out of the van to begin the day’s labour. We worked close by him for the next ten hours, maybe more. We stopped for a short while for cups of tea and Cathy and I snacked on the lunch we had brought. Gary introduced us to some of the other men and he told them what we had been whispering to him while we worked. He told them that we had a daddy who thought he could bring down Mr Price or at least stand up to him. Some laughed openly and others turned away to conceal their laughter. But not all of them. Some looked me and Cathy up and down as if trying to gauge the measure of our father by sizing up his offspring. If that is what they were doing they were likely to be surprised. I was still a little lad and though Cathy had that great and alarming strength about her, she was still just a girl in their eyes. Gary, at least, seemed convinced by us. He had spoken directly to my sister after all and Cathy was nothing if not compelling. Without fail, her eyes made contact with whomever she was speaking to. She stared, blinking only occasionally, and so quickly and faintly that it could almost be missed. She did not laugh nervously where others might. She committed to her story where others were prone to waiver, and she always believed everything she said – a kind of honesty to which few could admit. There was some hope in her words, I suppose, and Gary was pinned. Through him others were convinced too and Cathy spotted a good moment to invite them up to our house as Daddy had instructed us. They were to come and we would light a bonfire, drink beer and cider, and cook meat on the open flames. A few said they would come there and then and Gary said that he would bring more. Cathy urged him to remain quiet about our business. He assured us he would be canny and I believed him. That evening we passed their names to Ewart.
Chapter Thirteen
Caring for a wood means huge stacks of trimming get piled up around the place. In order to let new growth fight through, overhanging branches, crumbled bark and fallen trees must be cleared. Weeds in the undergrowth must be managed. The right shoots must be let through and the wrong ones discouraged. Hazel needs to be hacked back to the stem so that it sprouts forth again severally next season like the heads of Hydra.
The multiple, thin trunks that come from hazel are useful for building fences and baskets and they form the wattle of wattle and daub walls. Daddy, with our help, had been rebuilding and extending the chicken coop with wattle and daub and something like a thatched roof, though Daddy admitted a proper thatcher would be loath to give his approximation that name.
The new chicken coop was attached to our house. Its back wall was what had been the outside of our kitchen wall, by the stove. This meant the hens could enjoy the warmth that seeped through the wood and stones, such that it did. Daddy said that most people kept their chickens at the bottom of the garden far from the human house so that the human family need not be bothered by the clucking and scratching of the birds. Daddy said this was unkind and that he would rather live with the racket than think of the creatures left needlessly cold when there was a clear and direct remedy. So we built their house tucked up close against ours. Its wattle walls were curved and crinkled like a callous on the smooth, straight lines Daddy had constructed for our home the previous year. A grotesquely large wasps’ nest glued to the side of a silver birch.
With all that work for the chickens and all the continuing work to restrain and shape the copse, the piles of woodland debris grew and grew. We burnt much of it in our stove but every now and then we set a load ablaze in an outdoor bonfire. We picked clear evenings for these, even if the cold was biting, and we stood about and warmed ourselves against the baying flames and roasted cuts of meat or vegetables or else we toasted bread as we had when we first arrived and lived out of the two vans.
Now, we had much wood to burn and this time decided to bring others along to our bonfire. We invited Andrew the butcher and Peter and Ewart and Martha, and Gary and the other labourers that Cathy and I had made contact with. Ewart suggested an event to get to know people properly, to foment support or sound out the people and the possibilities that lay in our community. Martha said that we had been alone for too long.
Maybe so. The prospect of so many faces coming up the hill to see us felt strange, like we were to be stripped naked and paraded.
This said, there was excitement as well as fear. I busied myself with arrangements for the food we would serve. I calculated the amount we would need and saw that we got it in the days before. I picked spring vegetables from the patch and chopped them into chunks before setting them on skewers to char over the fire. I picked out some large potatoes from our store. The new potatoes in the ground were too little to disturb so I went to these hefty lates that we had kept dark in hessian sacks from last autumn. The store was running low but the ones I chose would be big enough and I wrapped them in tin foil so we could place them on the embers of the fire. That way they get all smoky as they cook and the skin becomes crisp while the white flesh on the inside melts like hot dollops of cream, not far in texture from the butter we would drizzle over the tops. Daddy sorted most of the meat but I ground offcuts and entrails and made little patties with barley and spice.
We invited Vivien too.
I met with her almost every day. Sometimes she would leave me with reading or work to finish in silence. On other occasions she would stay with me and chat. I cherished these conversations and when I could think of a good one I would ask her a question about what I was reading in the hope that her answer would be long and detailed and that it would lead us to other topics, further questions, new answers.
The thought that she would be coming up to our home excited me. I liked the idea of seeing her in a new place and showing her around the spaces I inhabited with Cathy and Daddy. I wanted to show her the trees in our copse and the chickens and my vegetable patch and the house itself. I wanted the chance to tell her things she might not know. This was my land and I could show it to her. If there was time I wanted to take her up to the railway tracks. There would certainly be trains passing while our guests were with us but I wanted to take Vivien, especially, up for a closer look.