How Was It For You?

by Carmen Reid

  ‘She’s upped and left. Packed her bags, note on the table for Fraser telling him she’d stayed to bring up the boys and now that the youngest was old enough, she was off . . . said she didn’t care for him any more, didn’t know if she ever had much . . . and she was tired of staring at the same old hilltop view, so she was off to London—’ at this he nodded in Pamela’s direction.‘Seems she’d been talking to you,’ he added.

  ‘No . . . no.’ Pamela took a swig from her bottle of beer, slightly panicked. Another marriage crisis could not be pinned on her, definitely not.‘Nothing to do with me,’ she said.‘I can’t even remember us talking about London much.’ Although she did now, with a lurch, remember Olive asking her if she’d had a cleaner in London and how much did cleaners cost there.

  ‘And . . .’ Jeff’s beery breath washing over them both . . .‘turns out she had an investment account. Been putting some of the housekeeping away every week and she left with plenty of money in her pocket.’

  Grubby old sozzled Simon, sitting beside Pamela, whistled for effect.

  ‘Well, that’ll only last a couple of weeks or so in London,’ Alex chimed in, not sure she’d ever had so much fun in a pub before.

  ‘You from London?’ Simon asked, leaning across to her.

  ‘Yes,’ Alex ventured.

  ‘Terrible place, isn’t it?’ Simon replied, certain he would get her agreement on this.

  ‘Er . . . no. That’s why I live there.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not for me . . . no, no, no. When I was in the army . . .’

  ‘Well, it’s obviously the place for Olive,’ Jeff mercifully cut across what might have been a long and painful reminiscence.

  ‘Well, well,’ was Pamela’s measured response.‘Where’s she going to live?’

  ‘No-one knows. She said in her note she would look for a place and work as a cleaner. “I’ve done it all my life, be nice to get paid for it,” that’s what she wrote. Fraser is devastated,’ Jeff added.‘Been in here almost every night with his son for supper. Doesn’t have the first clue how to look after the two of them.’

  ‘Bout time he learned, then,’ came a voice from one of the tables.

  This seemed to throw the debate open to the floor and opinions were tossed about. Most quite admiring of Olive’s dramatic action.

  ‘Fraser was always a boring old git.’

  ‘She’s well rid of him.’

  ‘Good for Olive. Who wants to look at the same miserable old face for the rest of their days?’

  Chairs were turned and pulled closer at this.

  ‘Well, that’s the thing about staying with the same person for life.’ This from the man Pamela knew as Al, who was almost always in with his wife, but not tonight.‘It can be very good or very bad. When I see Jane’s face,’ he went on, ‘I see her the way she was when we married twenty-seven years ago. Just beautiful. When I look at another woman her age, I just see an old woman.’

  The room was a little hushed for a moment with the romance of this. Pamela and Alex exchanged a look.

  ‘We should go,’ Alex said, draining the last of her beer.‘We have lots to talk about.’

  Once they were outside in the car park, Alex teased her: ‘You’re terrible. You’re causing havoc out here.’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake, Olive can’t be my fault. No way. If they were miserable together, of course she should have left – probably years ago. Good luck to her.’ She thought of the sitting room.‘She’ll be an excellent cleaner. And who knows? Maybe she’ll finally go to art school . . . get back in touch with her – alleged – inner lesbian! Go, Olive!’

  ‘And there won’t be any staying up late tonight,’ Pamela warned her friend, once the Land Rover was back on the road again.‘We’re up early in the morning to pick vegetables.’

  ‘Come and visit me in my rural idyll, you say – actually I’ve just been brought here as cheap labour.’

  ‘I found Dave’s farm diary,’ Pamela confessed.

  ‘Have you been reading it?’ Alex asked, then added, ‘Why am I asking? Obviously, you’ve been reading it . . . or you wouldn’t be mentioning it with such a guilty look on your face, would you?’

  ‘Yes . . . but it’s not what you think, it’s not that kind of diary.’ Although there had been one entry she wasn’t going to tell Alex about.‘It’s about what’s planted where and when and all that, but there are also pages of notes about the farm next door to ours. He’s worried we’re being polluted by it and he’s been out at night logging the comings and goings of tankers on the road.’

  That was how he’d found out about her:

  9.45 p.m. Tanker left Bridge Farm, decided to follow. Three miles or so up dual carriageway west, turn off to H&I’s farm. Didn’t follow tanker to final destination because saw our car.

  All was clear from those words. Her husband had seen the Saab, had almost certainly pulled up and seen her together with Lachlan. The thought sent a cold shiver down her spine, gave her a pain in her chest.

  ‘What kind of tankers?’ Alex wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t know, I’m not sure he ever got close enough to find out.’

  ‘Maybe we should go up there and take a little look around,’ Alex suggested.

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘Oh, why not? We could go up tonight, poke about in the dark a bit, hope no-one sees us. What’s the worst that could happen?’

  ‘We could get shot!’ Pamela pointed out.

  ‘No! We’ll just pretend we’re silly Londoners who’ve got lost – or we’ll say we’re from the telly, location scouting for “How Clean Is Your Farm?”’ They both laughed at this.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Pamela agreed.‘Just a little look though, not that I have any idea what we’re supposed to be looking for.’

  Chapter Thirty-one

  AFTER STOPPING AT the farmhouse to park the Land Rover and change into boots, they walked up the road to Bridge Farm in the dark. Pamela had a torch in her pocket but they’d decided not to use it until absolutely necessary and now that their eyes were adjusting, it didn’t seem too hard.

  Pamela knew she would never have dared to do this on her own: tall black trees looming over them, whooshing in the light wind . . . freaking her out.

  ‘If anything darts out at us – you know, a bird or rabbit or something – I’m going to faint,’ she confided in a loud whisper.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. We’ll be fine.’

  They tramped on, hands in pockets, chins down. As they came nearer to the farm, they saw lights on in the farmhouse but there was no sign of tankers, deliveries or any other kind of activity going on outside.

  ‘If we cut in through this field, we can skirt round the back of the house and get to the other side of those big sheds. Have a good old poke about behind them,’ was Alex’s suggestion.

  ‘Right.’ Pamela wasn’t exactly brimful of enthusiasm at this. She was wearing wellies and a light anorak but still . . . a big, unknown field . . . in the pitch dark.

  ‘C’mon then.’ Alex pulled her by the arm and plunged them both through the open gate and into a field which felt soft and boggy underfoot, clods of earth sticking to their boots, weighing them down.

  As soon as they were 20 metres or so in, they began to notice the smell – rotting, manure-y. The kind of smell that caught in the back of your throat and didn’t budge, getting stronger and stronger.

  ‘God, what died?’ Alex said, wading on through the mud, an arm over her nose and mouth.

  ‘It’s getting worse, Alex, I don’t like this at all.’

  ‘Neither do I, but we’ve got this far . . .’

  There was the outline of a parked digger, left overnight in the field, not far away from them. They both felt that whatever was causing the stink must be very close now. Pamela was straining her eyes to see what they were walking through. It didn’t feel right, it was too lumpy and uneven, with unyielding bits. It didn’t feel like earth, but in the blackness she couldn’t make i
t out. She hated the fact that she was scared. What a wuss. If they ran into a cow now, that would probably finish her off.

  ‘Shite!’ With a surprised cry and squelching, squooshing sound, Alex fell down. A pained ‘Owww. Bugger’ followed.‘Don’t come over here,’ she said next, still wincing.‘The ground is really boggy, I’m up to my knees in it and I’ve hit something really sharp.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Pamela, fumbling in her pocket for the torch, didn’t care who caught them now. Alex needed to see properly.

  ‘Oh arse, I’m stuck,’ Alex said.‘And I’m bleeding. What is this stuff?’

  Pamela switched on the beam and directed it at her friend. The pale shaft of light revealed an extremely unpleasant sight.

  They were in a field littered with shredded chicken corpses. Not very well shredded either – there were visible legs, wings, heads with eyes and beaks, claws and rotting bits of breast lying out on the open earth. Swinging the torch about, Pamela could see they were close to the edge of a deep hole which had been gouged out of the earth by the digger.

  Stepping closer to it, she shone her light in and looked down. It was about 10 feet deep and filled with far more chicken bodies.

  ‘Oh God!’ was her response, ‘We’re in a chicken dump.’

  Alex, struggling to get up out of the mud, added grimly: ‘Chicken Armageddon, more like.’

  Pamela turned towards her, wanting to help, but Alex warned her off.‘Don’t worry, I’m getting there, you don’t want to get stuck in this as well.’

  ‘Where are you hurt?’ Pamela asked as Alex made it over to her.

  ‘Here—’ she held up her forearm, where a small puncture wound was bleeding, blood trickling down to her elbow.‘I’ve been attacked by a dead chicken.’

  Pamela couldn’t laugh at this. It was too horrible.

  ‘Let’s go and look in the sheds.’ Alex was undeterred, up for the full adventure now.

  ‘I just want to get out of here,’ Pamela told her.

  ‘Chicken!’ Alex said, which did make them laugh.‘Come on.’

  They kept the torch on and waded through the field, giving the pit a wide berth and scrabbling over two fences to get to the back of the enormous grey sheds.

  The lights were on inside the sheds, but it was quiet and they were sure there wasn’t anyone around. The problem was how to look into these buildings. There were no windows, just ventilation grilles which began well above head height.

  ‘Do you think you could give me a leg up? If you did it at the corner there, I could hold onto the drainpipe and maybe climb up and look in through that grille.’ Alex was turning out to be just the kind of reckless adventurer Pamela really didn’t want to have on her hands right now.

  But reluctantly, she went to the corner, made her hands into a stirrup for Alex’s slimy, muddy boot and boosted her up the drainpipe, then stood underneath so she could push Alex’s legs up a bit further.

  There was a moment of scuffling when mud and dirt rained down on Pamela’s head and then she could see that Alex had managed to press her face against the grille.

  She stayed there for a minute or two, then let herself fall back down to the ground.

  ‘OK, you have to see this. Come on—’ and Alex was bending down, offering Pamela her gripped hands as a step up.

  ‘Oh hell,’ Pamela sighed, but put her boot into her friend’s hands. In a very ungainly struggle, which included stepping on Alex’s head, Pamela clambered up, fearing the drainpipe was going to come loose on her. But finally she managed to get her face to the small holes punched into the shed’s metal wall.

  It took her eyes a moment to adjust and work out what she was looking at. Under long strip lights, the flesh-coloured floor of the shed seemed to be writhing, wriggling, alive.

  And then she saw that it was. A sea of chickens, crammed in together in their thousands, many featherless and the ones closest to her even bloody. Moving, shuffling, pecking away relentlessly at the floor, at the long feeding troughs, at each other. And she saw the little darts of brown weaving between them, moving at the troughs . . . rats. RATS. She felt a horrified shudder pass up her body. She wondered how many rats had been in the field, been in the pit . . . had just scuttled out of view at the sound of their approach.

  With a stifled cry, she slithered clumsily on the drainpipe, let go and fell to the ground, landing heavily on her back.

  ‘Ouf.’

  Alex pulled her up to her feet with the words: ‘Not nice, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not nice at all.’ Pamela heard the wobble in her voice.‘Please can we get out of here now, and not through the field?’

  ‘Yeah. Time to go.’

  They walked round the shed into the farm’s courtyard and, as quietly as they could, set off down the road back to Linden Lee, talking in fierce whispers about what they’d seen.

  ‘So, how was it?’

  Alex knew Pamela had just spent the best part of half an hour on the phone to Dave and she was frantic to know how it had gone, full of concern for her friends. She had once been certain that Pamela would finally leave Dave and that it would be the best thing for her to do, but now that she knew them both well, she wasn’t so sure. No longer knew what was going to make them happier . . . or, at least, cause them less pain.

  ‘It was OK,’ Pamela told her, pulling a chair out from the kitchen table and sitting down.‘He knew all about the chicken dump. Said the farmer needs a licence to do that and he doesn’t have one, so it’s being investigated . . . the water in the streams being monitored and so on.’

  Dave had sounded surprised to hear from her. Surprised that she had so much farm news for him and even more surprised that she’d been up to tour the chicken place.

  ‘How is he?’ Pamela had asked Ted, who had answered the phone.

  ‘He’s OK. Pretty upset with you, though – to say the least,’ had been Ted’s reply.

  ‘What do I do now?’ she’d asked her brother, longing for some sort of advice.

  ‘How should I know, Pammy?’ he’d said.‘Maybe you need to come down and talk to him.’

  ‘I don’t want to know about the farm stuff!’ Alex waved Pamela’s preamble away.‘I want to know about Dave. How is he? What’s happening? What did you say about . . . you know . . . the important stuff?’

  ‘Er, well . . . not a lot . . . is the answer,’ and Pamela outlined the brief, more than awkward conversation that had followed the farming talk.

  ‘So it doesn’t sound like he’s going to come back. Well, not yet anyway,’ was Alex’s verdict.

  ‘He says he’s looking into some things. I’m not sure what that means . . . maybe he’s looking for a job?’ It had just occurred to Pamela.‘Somewhere else to live?’ But she couldn’t imagine it. All the suits and ties he’d thrown out, determined not to go back. As soon as Dave had moved to Linden Lee, it was obvious that he loved it. He’d told her more than once that he could imagine being there for the rest of his life, which, OK, had panicked her then, but she couldn’t believe he was now thinking of leaving. Although maybe what she’d done was going to force his hand . . .

  ‘What do you think?’ Alex asked her for the hundredth time this weekend.‘What do you want to do?’

  Pamela thought for a long time, twisting the rings on her fourth finger round and round, before she finally answered: ‘It’s taken me this long to find out that I really, really like it here . . . and I miss him. I miss him terribly, every little thing about him.’

  There it was, out loud, the thing she’d never expected to feel this strongly, that she missed him in the morning, she missed him all day long and in the evening, she kept looking up to the other end of the sofa and missing him some more. His poetry in praise of vegetables, his strange wholemealy cooking, his latest plan to curb the snail population, tea the way he made it, his smell, his face, his voice. She missed it all.

  Alex smoothed crumbs from the tabletop in front of her, opened her cigarette packet, then changed her mind and
closed it again, before telling her friend: ‘OK. So you have to get him back, then.’

  ‘Ha! I don’t think that’s going to be so easy.’ Pamela could feel the tear about to slide out of her left eye and quickly pressed it away.

  ‘We should probably have some food,’ Alex tried to rally her.‘Anyone for chicken?!’

  ‘Bleurgh!!!’

  In the hectic fortnight that followed, Pamela worked very hard to keep Linden Lee in business, their customers in vegetables, and also to finish off the Murrays’ cottage in time for the first holiday-makers.

  She got up early to do the daily pick and delivery round, then divided the rest of her time between cottage jobs and problems and on to working late at the farm, watering cows and crops – checking with George and Harry that she wasn’t messing up – but even so, she was never busy enough not to notice that Dave didn’t phone, didn’t want to be in touch or even let her know what he was planning to do next. She’d tried to reach him several times but he hadn’t responded to her messages. And Ted, a reluctant go-between, had told her to leave it for a while.

  When the cottage was at last finished, Pamela toured Rosie round, then walked to the farmhouse with her because Rosie wanted to settle the final payment straight away.

  ‘I’m really pleased with them,’ Rosie told her.‘They’ve turned out even better than I was hoping. It’s a shame I can’t afford to get you to do the farmhouse.’

  Pamela smiled politely at this, suspecting nothing was further from the truth. Rosie probably never wanted to see her again, was straining to be nice.

  ‘But,’ Rosie added, ‘I’ve made a bit of a start on it myself, shamelessly pinching some of your cottage ideas.’

  ‘That’s OK. I pinched them all from somewhere else myself,’ Pamela replied, part of her desperate to know where Lachlan was . . . how he was doing . . . if her involvement with him had caused major ructions with his wife or not. Part hoping she wouldn’t have to see him again for a long time.

  They made it to the house and Pamela saw Lachlan’s jacket hanging up on the coat rack behind the door. Pulse suddenly racing at the thought that he might be in.