Chapter 2
Crinsley farmhouse, its stone walls keeping the inside cool, sprawled long and narrow. A cobbled courtyard separated it from a scramble of outhouses Lisa always found somewhat daunting. It seemed that everything the Graftleys touched multiplied. They had six children, and the Graftley Friesians, speckling black and white against the glossy green of their thriving pastures, bore ever-sturdier calves.
‘Frank do reckon as fertilising with Doubler don’t just increase grass and milk yields, he do reckon the old orchard trees have took on a new lease of life,’ Meg explained.
‘I do that,’ her husband agreed quietly. Lisa’s eyes, as yet unaccustomed to the dark after the brilliant sunshine, hadn’t spotted the farmer sitting by his empty fireplace draining a mug of something she suspected was the scrumpy he made every autumn. ‘Just for we and a few friends,’ Frank had expounded to her several times. ‘Can’t abide that stuff them peddle in they shops. Cider’s meant to be still; not that frothy rubbish them sells in they supermarkets.’
Frank’s cider came straight out of his hogshead barrels, at least twenty of them stacked neatly in one of his barns. Lisa turned dutifully to smile at him. He seemed obsessed with having more of everything.
‘Dangdest thing,’ he said, looking right at her. ‘Reckoned us’d have to grub out they old trees and buy apples in. But no, us had a decent crop last year.’ He turned to Alec whom Lisa could now make out sitting across the fireplace from Frank, politely taking tiny sips at his cider.
‘And Flaxton’s little baby doesn’t stop at increased crop yields,’ her husband put in sagely. ‘It boosts profits very nicely, thank you. There’s reason to suppose that sales of Doubler will increase exponentially.’ He placed the pewter mug on the floor beside his chair and opened his briefcase. Alec didn’t much care for cider, Lisa knew, though he’d been careful to drink his whack whenever he was with Frank. ‘In fact, their latest figures suggest that their market share has tripled in a single season. It’s really quite astonishing.’
The newly-qualified accountant Lisa had married eight years before, when she’d given up teaching at Hornsby Art College, had almost immediately joined the prestigious City firm of Grew, Donsett & Tyler. Two years ago he’d been invited to become a full partner of the renamed Grew, Donsett, Tyler and Wildmore. Alec had been elected their man out West, chosen to open an office in Bristol.
‘Bristol,’ he’d told Lisa at the time, ‘is going to be the second city in the UK. All the banks are moving out of London. Lloyds has already built Bank House in Wine Street.’
The first organic fertiliser from Flaxton, enthusiastically called Doubler and more than living up to its name, had been as good for the firm of accountants instructed by Flaxton as it had for West Country farmers shrewd enough to switch to organic. Small farmers, hardly able to make ends meet before, found they could sell their produce at a good price. They flocked to buy Flaxton’s products.
On the back of Flaxton’s success Grew, Donsett, Tyler & Wildmore had quickly become the leading agricultural accountants. Flaxton’s headquarters was sited in an old mansion set in the Mendips. Their chief executive, Nigel Carruthers, owned a country estate there, near Priddy. Alec, astute as ever, had rapidly worked out that this dynamic West Country firm would expand, in fact be quoted on the Stock Exchange, before much longer. That was why he’d looked for his country house near Wells, the smallest city in England.
‘Good schools there,’ he’d explained to Lisa when she’d objected to moving to such a remote rural area. ‘Millfield’s in Street, and Wells Cathedral School has a very good reputation.’ It was the assuredness with which he’d talked of schools which had persuaded her to move from London.
Doubler, based on algae and patented world-wide, was obviously a winner. Now Flaxton were testing their latest product, Multiplier, first manufactured eighteen months before. The new fertiliser incorporated plankton, and promised to be an even greater success than Doubler. Somerset was the trial ground again, and the Graftley farm had been chosen as the first experimental site.
‘Somehow or other,’ Alec said as he peered through steel-rimmed glasses at his balance sheets, ‘though the chemists haven’t worked out the reasons yet, they think the strain of plankton they’re using for Multiplier encourages the shedding of extra ova in mammals, and increased egg laying in fowl.’ Alec beamed round the room as though he, personally, had invented Multiplier. ‘Give your chickens corn fertilised with it, and you’ll have more free range eggs than you can handle!’
‘Us can always sell they,’ Frank put in coolly, setting down his mug and sauntering over to Alec. ‘Get a good price for they.’
‘What d’you mean, ‘plankton’?’ Lisa asked. ‘Are you saying Multiplier’s completely organic?’
‘Absolutely; no artificial ingredients at all.’ Alec was drawing his finger along the lines of figures. ‘Just look at these projections we’ve been working on.’
‘Manufactured like Doubler, or is it a new process?’ Lisa wanted to know.
‘What? Yes, of course.’ He looked over his shoulder at the farmer peering suspiciously at the figures. ‘It is completely organic, Lisa; I told you. Algae are purely vegetable matter; plankton does contain some animal organisms. But they’re primitive organisms,’ he added hurriedly. ‘That’s still organic.’
‘Easy to tell by seeing the bigness - healthy enough,’ Frank assured Lisa. ‘No need for yer to worry none.’
‘Isn’t plankton something whales live on?’ Lisa persisted, holding Seb on her lap and helping him drink the Graftleys’ goat’s milk from a cup. Most children, Meg had assured her, tolerated it better than cow’s milk.
‘Exactly,’ Alec agreed. ‘The stuff can be produced rapidly and in vast quantities. And I’ll wager the eggs will be larger as well as more of them.’
‘The hens be mine to see to,’ Meg put in. ‘I do run a few for the family. No need for more’n that.’ She looked across at Alec’s papers, then at her husband. ‘I do like they to scratch around for their grub,’ she said firmly. ‘I reckon feed fertilised with Multiplier makes ’em double-yolk.’
‘Folk do like they double-yolkers,’ Frank gruffed, frowning at his wife. ‘If us do get a surplus, us can always sell they,’ he repeated. He cut the end off his Havana, placed it in his mouth, and lit it. It smouldered like a gun which had just fired.
Meg’s eyes slid away from him. She said nothing further.
‘I know you need the money, Frank,’ Alec said wickedly, the left side of his mouth rising more than the right. ‘You want to buy more privatisation issues to add to your little portfolio.’
Frank grinned. A brawny man, his neck and arms a deep darkened reddish-brown, his curly black hair showing wisps of grey, he still moved gracefully and quickly. ‘Only doing me bit for me country.’ He reached easily towards the floor, lifted his pewter mug to his lips again and took a long deep swallow.
‘We saw an enormous duck on our way over,’ Lisa told them. ‘Didn’t we, Seb?’
‘’Ack, ’ack.’
‘Mark’s dillies?’ Frank smiled down at Seb. ‘Him do run a team o’ Khaki Campbells alongside the moor; stops they lorries going too fast.’
‘Not a team,’ Lisa said. ‘At first there was just one. A bit aggressive, actually; and round enough to look like a pregnant duck!’
‘Dillies lays eggs,’ Frank said, staring at Lisa.
She smiled away her irritation; she wasn’t that much of a townie! ‘Of course; it’s just that this one was so bloated, somehow. And she rather took against our being there, didn’t she, Seb?’ She turned to face Frank, keen to understand what he’d meant. ‘How can they slow the lorries down?’
He chuckled. ‘They drivers either cut their speed to allow for they, or mow they down.’ He grinned. ‘Works, either way.’
Lisa shuddered at the calculated callousness of it. ‘I did notice a driver brake,’ she agreed. ‘I thought he’d run that fat duck over, but he swerved, and when he’d gone there were two quite ordinary ducks waddling along, without a feather out of place. They seemed quite amiable, as well.’
The farmer stared at her, his eyes blank, and then turned to Alec. ‘Problem us be having now baint how to increase yields; be more how’n us stop they getting out of hand. Twin lambs be fine and dandy; but more’n that and it can turn bad all round.’ He drained his mug and looked up slowly. ‘Don come across a set o’ triplets only t’other day.’
Frank looked across the room at the silent Don sitting by the window and putting back the cider. Lisa had often marvelled at the man. Quite old, seventy at least she judged, but he was as sinewy and firm as many a younger man.
‘Arr,’ he said, drinking deep. ‘Not allus t’best thing. ‘Twere the one wi’ the twin lambs; us forgot to tag ’un. Next time us looked twere three on they! Her couldn’t handle they wi’ jest two teats, and littl’uns were missin’ out. Missus had to hand rear ’un. T’wont do.’
‘All money in the bank,’ Alec put in hurriedly.
‘Not if they dies o’ starvation, it baint.’
‘I think it might encourage rabbits, too,’ Lisa put in. ‘Seb and I came across a whole warren.’
‘Coneys?’ Don asked, suddenly animated, looking up. His eyes, Lisa noticed, were almost colourless. A light blue-grey. ‘Yer saw they in t’homeground?’
‘Really big ones,’ Lisa told him eagerly. ‘All standing on their hind legs. They weren’t even afraid of us.’
‘Us’ll put paid to they tomorrow.’ Frank crashed his mug down. Bronze drops spurted down the pewter into a pool, the quarry tiles glistening red. ‘Us’ll shoot t’whole lot o’ they damn critters.’
Lisa, shocked at the threat of such wholesale slaughter, felt a lurch in her belly. A churning feeling stirred the contents of her stomach. Seb’s weight on her lap felt heavy. She tried to shift him further down her knees as heartburn made her flinch.
‘Go and see Daddy, Seb.’
He trotted off obediently. Lisa could feel colour flood her shoulders and reach into her face and hair as blood surged round her body.
‘You be feeling all right, my duck?’ Meg’s voice seemed distant.
Lisa grasped the table in front of her, lowering her head between her arms to drain the blood.
‘Us’ll fetch some water.’
Alec was by her side, putting his arms around her shoulders, then squatting next to her, keeping Seb from trying to climb back on to her lap. Her hair felt sticky, plastered to her forehead.
‘Up we go!’ Alec heaved the little boy against his shoulder. ‘I expect it’s the new baby,’ he said, softly, whispering into Lisa’s ear. ‘Would you like me to run you home?’
‘Dare say it be account of the clover her had a go at.’ Meg put a filled glass of water on the table. ‘Them do say as it baint good for pregnant women.’
‘Clover? Lisa ate clover?’
‘Just sucked a bit o’ nectar out.’ Meg laughed at him, but her brown eyes were veiled. ‘Only a drop. Her’ll be as right as rain again tomorrow.’
Lisa sipped slowly from the water Meg had brought over for her. The cool liquid helped calm her. She dipped her fingers in and spread a few drops over fiery cheeks.
‘Morning sickness in the afternoon,’ she managed to gasp. She pushed back her chair and headed for the bathroom. The dark unfamiliar house made her nervous. She drew in great gulps of air, and then felt as though her body were distended, bloated up. Just like the sheep Meg had talked about.
The firm direction of Meg’s hands steered her through a door. ‘I be lighting the lamp.’
Kneeling by the lavatory bowl Lisa allowed the contents of her stomach to erupt. An odd intense yellow stained the bowl. It reminded her of something - she couldn’t quite place it. In any case, quite different from the trickle of innocuous white she’d sicked up when carrying Seb. She looked at the lurid colour and felt prickles of panic stabbing through her body. The vivid buttercup hue of egg yolks came to mind - Meg’s double-yolked eggs – and precipitated further retching. Perhaps deeper-coloured vomit was a sign of twins, she tried to soothe herself.
Another turn in her belly brought on a further spasm which seemed to relieve Lisa of whatever her body had taken such exception to. The liquid was now clear. Quite suddenly she felt all right again.
Flushing the bowl and splashing her face and hands with water, Lisa rubbed a towel briskly over her face. No further problems; just pregnancy nausea of a slightly different kind. She’d check it out with her GP.
‘Each period of gestation is different,’ Roger Gilmore had intoned over the telephone that very morning, ringing through confirmation of conception. ‘Just take it easy. You’ve got a toddler on your hands as well, this time.’
‘It’s nothing at all,’ she reassured Alec as she hurried back into the room where the others were. ‘I think it’s just that Somerset clover is so rich - like everything else around here! When I pulled off a chunk of petals you couldn’t even see that they’d gone.’
Sally and Jean had set the big table by the window. Freshly baked bread, Meg’s own clotted cream, the new season’s strawberry jam, farm butter, lardy cake and scones heaped the table high. And a birthday cake - Victoria sponge covered in chocolate icing - for Seb. A large solitary candle was at its centre.
‘I jest be lighting ’un,’ Frank said, walking over. ‘Now then, Seb. Blow, like a big boy!’
‘A nice of cup o’ tea,’ Meg offered Lisa. ‘Put yer right.’
‘I’d love some of that delicious whole-wheat bread,’ Lisa said eagerly. ‘I really feel quite hungry now.’
‘Eating for two,’ Meg laughed. ‘Spread some o’ my butter on that, and add a bit o’ jam.’
Lisa tucked into Meg’s food with relish. All wholesome, homemade produce. She was making a good start on feeding the new life within her.
‘You are wonderful, Meg,’ Lisa said, looking in awed admiration as Meg brought in another cream-filled bowl.
‘Us do make a good dollop o’ clotted cream,’ Meg agreed, putting it down. ‘But the girls laid the tea.’ She laughed. ‘Praise where praise be due. Them be turning into proper little maids.’