How Was It For You?

by Carmen Reid

  ‘Hello,’ Harry repeated. Red-cheeked and straw hair on end, he was holding out his hand. ‘Pam.’ He shook her hand vigorously and then it was Dave’s turn.‘Come in, come in, we’re just having a bite, then we’ll show you everything you want to see and more besides.’ He gave them a wide grin, all wholesome, bulky guy, with an outdoorsy face, muscular shoulders and the checked shirt and baggy, beige cords Pamela realized she’d been expecting.

  They followed him through the back door of the house and into a dark corridor, then into the bright jumble of a large, flowery kitchen, around which wafted the most gorgeous, edible smell of fresh bread.

  ‘Just a bite’ turned out to be a huge farmhouse table full of food. She was introduced to Harry’s wife, Ingrid, and his two small blond children, Kitty and Jake; usually she would have been totally absorbed with them, but the food was such a distraction.

  She and Dave were ushered to seats and served platefuls of chunky vegetable soup and slabs of bread. There was a butter dish on the table and plates of tomato salad, green salad and a hunk of ham lying with a knife casually slung alongside it. Harry leaned over, carved off a fat slice and sat down to smother it in relish from an unmarked jar.

  ‘God, I’m sorry,’ Ingrid fussed a bit, getting them matching plates, glasses and cutlery.‘We have no manners, we get so ravenously hungry out here. It’s all the physical work – hard labour, that’s what my husband has sentenced us to,’ and she smiled fondly at him.

  As the soup went down, Pamela allowed herself to look a little at the Heidi-healthy children sitting opposite her, sneaking peeks over their bowlfuls and giggling. They had messy curls, glowing cheeks, white teeth and pink tongues.

  Blond and pretty Ingrid was every bit as wholesome-looking in her tight jeans and red T-shirt. Pamela felt pale, stodgy and just a bit grubby compared to them. They were like a farming family from a Swedish film or something, scarily perfect. Her overwhelming reaction was that she was never going to be like this. She was never going to be rosy-cheeked, outdoorsy, effortlessly producing home-made soup and children; she might as well get back in the car and go home now.

  Harry was deep in talk about why they had to move now, because Kitty was about to start school and they wanted somewhere they’d be for the next ten years at least, somewhere big enough for a proper herd. They had an offer in on a place just seven miles away.

  ‘Ridiculous to move house and fields and have all that upheaval, have to convert another farm to organic all over again, but we hope it’ll be worth it in the long run.’

  ‘So what are you growing this year?’ Dave asked, which prompted a long explanation of all the different fields and their crops from Harry.

  Ingrid wanted to know if Pamela had lived on a farm before.

  ‘No, total farm virgin,’ was Pamela’s answer, then she panicked that the word was unsuitable for five-year-old ears.

  But Ingrid laughed.‘Me too. Kitty was tiny when he dragged me here kicking and screaming from York with his mad organic veg scheme, and I got pregnant with Jake about five minutes later, but I love it. I always liked gardening and growing things, and now I just do what I liked to do on a huge scale. Almost everything we eat, we’ve grown ourselves. Coffee?’ she asked, and quickly added, ‘not home-grown, I can assure you of that.’

  Was that just the merest hint of Swedish accent? Pamela wondered, or was this whole blond, apple-cheeked thing getting to her? And why did Ingrid have to be nice and a bit funny and self-deprecating when Pamela really wanted to hate her?

  ‘Has it been very hard work?’ Pamela asked.

  ‘Well, not really. Two years we spent with a big garden full of vegetables watching the grass grow, because the place was in conversion. The last three years have been very full on, growing, growing, trying out all kinds of different things, working out how to get rid of bugs and weeds without the nasty stuff, then trying to sell the produce. Because, guess what? Hardly anyone round here eats organic vegetables . . . or vegetables at all, as far as I can see. All these people living in this gorgeous countryside and they’re trailing off to the supermarket every week to buy packet soup and microwavable lasagne . . .’ It looked like she was working up to a bit of a stormer. But she caught her husband’s eye and stopped with a smile.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m always going on about it, it’s like a religion or something. Vegetable Eaters Anonymous, I need your help.’

  ‘We actually sell most of the stuff to Norwich market and even New Covent Garden,’ Harry explained.‘We do some veg box schemes as well. The organic oats and potatoes, they do really well. You can grow great big fields of them and they all get sold. Big demand for more. At the moment, we buy in loads of dung, because we only have a few cows, but when we have our herd, the crop rotation, manuring, fields in grass, will all begin to make much more sense.’ Harry was warming to the topic and Dave was defrosting too. Pamela could see now how nervous he was, sure he’d look such an ignorant amateur. But after Harry had been chatting for half an hour, Dave dared to ask him if he’d known much about it when he started.

  ‘Not a lot!’ was Harry’s disarming reply.‘I’m a farmer by the book. In fact, I’ll even admit to you, if you don’t tell anyone, that I’m doing an organic farming diploma by correspondence course right now. But you know, lots of books, lots of wacky experiments, we’re learning as we go along, you’ll soon get the hang of it, and we hardly seem to spend any money at all. No big supermarket bills, no big restaurant bills, no commuting fares, no keeping up with fashion—’ he winked at his wife.‘Hardly any toys needed, even. The simple life.’ He leaned back and beamed at them.

  Ingrid brought over a plate with a wholemeal fruit loaf on it.‘I know how bad this looks,’ she said to Pamela, setting the still warm cake right in front of her where it breathed spicy, inviting fumes.‘Like I spend all day chained to the Aga cooking and baking. I’m not a 1950s housewife, I promise. I just really like to cook and find I have the time for it since we moved here . . . and it’s quicker to bake a cake than drive to the town to get one . . .’ She stopped herself, smiled and added: ‘Look, I’m going to stop apologizing for it. Just have a slice.’

  See. Too nice. Too funny and yes, Ingrid was half-Swedish, it turned out.

  When the coffee cups were drained and the last crumbs of cake had been wiped from the plates, it was time to tour.

  ‘D’you want to do the house first, or the farm?’ Harry asked.

  As Pamela said, ‘House,’ Dave answered, ‘Farm.’

  ‘Pamela’s an interior designer, so the house is quite important,’ Dave explained, with a smile.

  ‘Oh no! You’re not!’ Ingrid looked quite pained at this.‘I cannot cope with an interior designer going round the house! We had all sorts of plans, but . . . I’m not sure what happened. Pathetic. Come on then, might as well get this torture over with.’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t mind . . . the kitchen’s lovely.’ Pamela tried to put her at ease. In truth, the kitchen was the gaudiest, most early Eighties bit of hideousness she’d been in for years. Matching brown sink, brown taps and brown cooker, orange wallpaper, yeuuurgh!

  As she toured round she made encouraging noises, but, really, she was mentally changing everything. The house was large, but didn’t have too many rooms. They were all on a generous scale: four big bedrooms, the luxury of a dedicated office . . . a dining room!

  There was lots of brown, tired-out magnolia, patterned carpeting, patterned wallpaper and fiddly bits and pieces everywhere. It obviously wasn’t Ingrid’s doing, because most of the rooms looked worn and tatty, the curtains had faded long ago and the flowered sofas gaped at frayed holes on the arms. There were strange collections of things all about the house. Beside the downstairs fireplaces, towering stacks of newspapers and baskets of logs.

  ‘The Sunday Times,’ Ingrid explained.‘Lights the fire all week.’

  In the small room which housed the washing machine and drier were rows and rows of clean jam jars, assorted sizes, stacks
of plastic plant pots, balls of string.

  But Pamela’s professional eye took over and saw only the all-important basics: the big, 12-paned windows which let light flood into the spaces, the solid, flat walls, the wide spiralling stairs, the long cast iron bath, original sink and radiator in the bathroom.

  She imagined acres of rustic sisal flooring, shades of palest pistachio, duck egg blue . . . Oh yes, a fantastic project.

  Every window framed a view more beautiful than the last: the tall trees which sheltered the house, and from every room upstairs, miles of greenery and sky.

  The bright light was the biggest surprise. She’d imagined a farmhouse of low ceilings and gloom; instead she saw now that the light streamed in from every direction because it was unchecked by any other buildings.

  ‘I find I sort of follow the sun around,’ Ingrid was explaining.‘Our bedroom and the kitchen are on the east, so we wake up to the early morning sunshine and have breakfast with it, then the office and sitting room are sunny all day long and in the evening, the children watch the sunset from their bath. I don’t think I could have even told you in which direction my old house faced, but here it’s inescapable. You notice all kinds of things much more. The trees turning yellow at the end of the summer, the new buds in spring. The dirt on the window panes! I just hope the new place is going to be as nice as this. It has a character all of its own. I’ll be really sorry to go.’

  ‘OK, farm time,’ Harry said, when even the smallest storage corner and cupboard had been inspected. They trooped down the stairs through the kitchen and into the dark corridor where Dave and Pamela headed for the door but the Taylors peeled off into a pantry dedicated to coats, anoraks, overalls, scarves, hats, winter boots, welly boots, hiking boots, dirty boots . . . and came out five minutes later clad in wellingtons and light, muddy cagoules.

  ‘We’ve got spares, if you want to change.’ Ingrid pointed politely at the dainty, Spanish open-toed sandals on Pamela’s feet.

  ‘No, no, don’t worry,’ she insisted, slightly horrified at the thought of putting her bare feet into someone else’s wellies.

  So obviously, if they were going to move here, they would have to have a new wardrobe of outdoor clothes. Did they only come in grass green or navy blue? Pamela wondered, having seen the rack. Was there a reason for this? Were you not allowed to scare the horses, or make the bulls run after you? So many rules – a whole way of life she didn’t think she knew the slightest thing about . . . and where did you even begin to ask?

  Dave was thinking about more practical requirements, asking Harry about tools and machinery and what was included in the sale and what would be needed on top.

  There was mention of rotovators, the cost but reusability of Agromesh.‘No substitute for a bit of manual hoeing though,’ Harry was explaining. Not just new clothes – they would need to learn a whole new language, if they did this.

  Outside, they walked past a low wooden and breeze block construction.‘What’s that?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Oh it’s absolutely fantastic.’ Harry, with a fresh burst of enthusiasm, lifted the lid to reveal three paper bundles the colour of unbleached coffee filters and a dark brown tangle that – Jesus Christ! Pam jumped back from the box – was moving.

  ‘Worms,’ Harry told them, grinning.‘They eat Jake’s nappies. Turn them into compost. Isn’t that amazing? I mean, we use special biodegradable nappies, but I still find it brilliant. Nappy in at one end, compost out at the other. This is the future.’ He knelt down and tugged at the bottom of the box, jerking out a tray lightly covered in brown earthy stuff.

  ‘There’s a liquid collector too—’ he tapped a tin at the side of the box.‘I won’t get that out . . . smells a bit, but it’s worked wonders on the tomatoes.’

  Pamela stepped further back from the wooden crate of horror. Worms which ate the baby’s nappies and this connected somehow to the tomatoes they had just eaten for lunch??!

  She couldn’t do this. It was too much. She glanced at Dave and saw that even he looked a bit shaken by this revelation.

  Harry put the lid down, wiped his hands off and smiled at them proudly.

  ‘So, did you settle in here OK?’ Pamela asked Ingrid, not wanting to think about composting worms for one moment longer. They both kept their eyes on the giggling children racing ahead to the gate in the hedge behind the house. The latch had been fixed up high where they couldn’t reach it.

  ‘I don’t think it was any worse or any better than moving to a new town,’ Ingrid replied after a pause in which she seemed to be gathering her thoughts.‘Some people are really friendly, want to know you; some aren’t. There are as many social things to get involved with as you like, or then again, you can just close the gates at the bottom of the drive and be alone.’

  Ingrid swung the latch, releasing her children out into the farmyard: ‘Other farmers, they can be a bit tricky, though,’ she was telling Pamela.‘It’s the organic thing. Most of them don’t get that, don’t even want to know about it, think we’re a bunch of freaky hippies or something. And I can understand that. I don’t think all other farmers are bad, most are pretty good, have a healthy respect for “the land” and all that. But there are a few horrors.’

  Jake tripped up and fell his length, landing face down screaming. Pamela watched as Ingrid picked him up quickly, dusted him down, but didn’t fuss too much, just wiped his hands with hers, set him up in his wellies and sent him off again.

  They toured the steadings and the old barns. So much detail, Harry keenly pointing it out: ‘This is where they kept the straw so they could just roll it down the slope into the forecourt where the cows would be all winter . . . I’d like a horse, I like the idea of going back to ploughing a single furrow with a horse, but Ingrid won’t have any of that. She’s the organic technological forefront kind of girl. I want to grind my oats by waterwheel, she’s into genetically modifying potatoes so they don’t get blight . . . I mean, GM? She’s practically the enemy.’

  ‘Did you get the windmill working?’ Dave wanted to know.

  ‘Oh yeah, it’s brilliant, isn’t it? Took an entire winter but now I wouldn’t want a farm without one. Have to get the one up at the new place going again. This one lights the entire steadings, you know.’

  ‘That’s four lightbulbs, Harry,’ Ingrid nudged him. Obviously the woman who kept this slightly crazed man grounded.

  They walked and walked all over the farm, down to the bottom boundary where overgrown wire fences and a lazy stream separated it from the neighbour’s fields. And all the way up to the top of the hill from where they could see for miles in the clear, bright light.

  All the time Harry and Ingrid talked, explained, showed off the results of their years of work.

  ‘Always, always something to do. Something falls down just as you’ve finished patching something else up. It’s a bit like owning an old house but on a huge scale,’ Harry said as the top rail of the gate he was shutting came loose in his hand.

  ‘Bugger.’

  Burst of giggle from Kitty.

  ‘Ooops.’

  ‘Just wait till you have a herd of cows,’ Ingrid warned him.‘We did try chickens,’ she added, ‘but cleaning the henhouse was horrendous, plus the chicken food attracted the dreaded R-A-T-S.’ She spelled the word out with a shudder.‘So the hens had to go, in a kill fest which turned us vegetarian for weeks . . . chickens running about without their heads – they really do that – it was gruesome. Urrgh.’

  Pamela had earth in her sandals, right in, wedged between her toes, small gritty bits underneath her soles. Now there was talk of rats and headless chickens. She had loved the views, and, yes, she had loved the house – but the fields with their big bushy vegetables and crops felt like a mystery she didn’t know how to begin to unravel. You planted what? Where? When? How? And how did you make it grow? Whenever Dave was away, she struggled to keep the houseplants alive.

  They had been out for over two hours and the children were tired and whiney.
Was there anything else they wanted to see right now, or was it time to go in for tea? Harry wanted to know.

  Tea was set out on the scruffy lawn in front of the house with big mugs, more slabs of fruit loaf, a huge bowl of strawberries and a jug of cream.‘Not ours,’ Ingrid said as she set the bowl down on the table.‘There’s a massive strawberry farm five miles away, run by Lachlan Murray and his wife Rosie, they supply M&S, Wimbledon, the Queen . . . No, she probably only eats Charles’s home-grown ones. I don’t really like to think too much about what they do to them, but they taste really good.’

  ‘So strawberries grow well round here?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Oh yeah, it’s sunny, pretty dry most summers,’ Harry threw in. ‘The soil isn’t too claggy. I’ve tried a few rows myself, but they were a bit small and mouldy. So, we eat Murray berries all summer. We’ve got raspberries though, but they’re not ripe yet.’

  Dave was eating his strawberries one by one, chewing thoughtfully.

  Pamela heaped some onto her plate, beside the big slice of cake she now felt starving for. She put the berry in her mouth and bit down. Warm and sweet, as Ingrid said, it tasted good.

  She looked up to see Dave watching her. Was he thinking about the other strawberries? she wondered. The ones which had brought them here. Was he hoping she could taste a difference?

  ‘They’re good,’ she said, in a quiet voice, just for him.‘But the other ones were perfect.’

  This seemed to please him.

  It was Ingrid who floated the idea of dinner, wine, watching the sunset and staying over.

  ‘You’ve such a long drive ahead of you. And such a big decision! Why don’t you stay? Wander about the place on your own. See it again in the morning, drive over into town . . . see it all . . . try to imagine living here. When we came to look at this place, we stayed for nearly a week, the Hurleys thought they’d never get rid of us,’ she added.

  The offer was so warmly made, they were easily persuaded. Pamela thought of the cosy guest room Ingrid had at the back of the house with a small window and a giant puff of old-fashioned feather duvet on the bed.