The Lie of the Land

by Amanda Craig

  ‘It’s not your fault, you poor thing,’ Sally says.

  They know what to do. Peter gets out his knife and skins what he can from the corpse. It’s a grim, bloody job and he’s so tired, yet this ewe must be given another ewe’s lamb, covered in the smell of the dead lamb’s slimy skin so that she’ll suckle it. Only then will the creature be given a reason to live – alongside a mighty shot of antibiotics. He is so gentle with the flock, as gentle as he’d be with their own children.

  By sundown the next day, the battle is over. The substitute lamb is suckling strongly at its foster mother’s teat, with the desperation of all young things to live. The pens are full of little families which need a bit of extra help, but most of the flock are out grazing, at least during the day.

  ‘I wasn’t sure we’d be in a fit state to have visitors,’ Sally says on Sunday, kissing her sisters and Anne’s children.

  Sally’s nephews and nieces love doing things like bottle-feeding the orphaned lambs with artificial milk, and are disappointed if there isn’t at least one to pet while their mother and aunts share a cup of tea together. This time, they’ve brought two friends.

  ‘Oh, he’s so sweet!’ one exclaims.

  ‘Look, Rosie, this is how you feed it,’ Anne’s eldest daughter says, with a trace of bossiness. Anne catches Sally’s eye, and laughs.

  ‘I can’t think who she reminds me of.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Sally says. They are all bossy, all three of them, and know it. ‘Whose are these?’

  ‘Incomers to Shipcott, living at Home Farm.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know the mum.’

  ‘Isn’t she the one involved with the housing development?’

  ‘That’s right. Turns out she and Martin are old friends from London.’

  ‘Oh?’ Tess says, with a wealth of enquiry.

  ‘Who knows?’ Anne answers softly, though Rosie’s well out of earshot.

  ‘The husband’s none too popular.’

  ‘I’m not surprised!’

  ‘Whingeing on in his newspaper about being forced to live in one of the most beautiful places in the whole country.’

  Anne doesn’t usually let her guard down; she’s very conscious that, like Sally and Tess, she is privy to all kinds of information about the families she encounters. Quentin Bredin must have really annoyed her for her to let off steam in this way.

  ‘The mum is lovely,’ Sally says. ‘She’s even coming to our book group.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Shame a local family couldn’t have taken it, though.’

  ‘But his dad is Hugh the poet, born in Trelorn,’ Anne says. ‘So he’s not an incomer, really. I’ve been over there quite a bit.’

  They know what this means: Anne is a Marie Curie nurse.

  ‘I still wouldn’t like to live in that house. Ever since that poor chap got murdered …’

  ‘I know. It haunts me, too. The most gentle, harmless person you can imagine, killed in that horrible way.’ Anne pauses. ‘The Bredins have been asking questions about him, or at least the man has. I wonder if there’s anything he can discover.’

  ‘The police didn’t find anything, did they?’ Tess asks.

  ‘I think they thought at one point there might be some connection to the Tores.’

  ‘There were those rumours about Randall and Di Tore.’

  ‘I don’t believe them. You’ve only got to see the Tores together to know they’re devoted.’

  ‘Though he’s twice her age, isn’t he?’

  ‘Since when did that matter to a rock star? Admit it, if he looked our way, we’d probably be unable to resist.’

  ‘Annie! I’m shocked!’ says Sally.

  Tess says, ‘I just wish they could find out who did it, so we can all sleep easy in our beds.’

  ‘But surely whoever did it has moved on?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Annie adds, ‘He must have been escaping from something, mustn’t he? Why else do incomers come here?’

  Sally’s nieces enter, with Lottie’s daughter holding the lamb in her arms.

  ‘He doesn’t want any more milk,’ she announces.

  ‘That’s all right. You put him down now, and let him stretch his legs.’

  Reluctantly, the little girl relinquishes the lamb which is growing stronger and more playful by the day, and they all go outside again. Everything thrills the children, from the lambs to their neighbours’ horses.

  ‘I wish I could have a pony,’ Rosie says, catching sight of their neighbours’ horses. ‘Oh, look, it’s hurt itself!’

  Sally, who has come with her, looks and sees. A hind leg has been cut; the mare is limping slightly, and when she looks closer—

  ‘Come away, my dear,’ she says. ‘I think I need to call the vet.’

  Those bloody Balls brothers, she thinks: I bet it’s them. They’re the ones who go lamping, and this would be just another bit of cruel fun.

  When she gets back to her house, it’s not just the vet whom she calls, but the police.

  20

  Work, Not Love

  The skies are still marbled with cold, but the energy of spring is prodigious. A million shades of green unfurl overnight: black-green, yellow-green, red-green, white-green, bronze-green, silver-green, green-green, speckled and spotted, dashed and dotted across the landscape. Birds bustle in branches, trilling like alarm clocks. The grass explodes with miniature suns. Impossible for Lottie not to feel cheered by it all.

  To be earning again means that Quentin can no longer push her around. Work, not love, is the one salvation: had she ever been tempted to abandon her career, she is now rewarded for never doing so. Those days of crawling into an office half-dead from broken nights, of struggling to keep going on nothing but coffee and adrenalin, of endless self-doubt that she was doing two things badly instead of one thing well, are justified. She is financially independent.

  Martin’s practice is a marked contrast to the kind of outfit she once worked for. Not everyone in the town likes him, but as far as she can tell, most respect what he is trying to do, even if there are the inevitable mutterings about how the development will change the character of Trelorn. The extension is his biggest project yet, but he’s worked a miracle by persuading the council to give it permission in under two years. It helps, presumably, that the chief investor is Tore.

  ‘We used to talk about what would revive the town when I was working on his house. We both love this part of the world, and so we’d talk about what was wrong and how much investment was needed, how something could be built that’s attractive and only for local people, not rich incomers,’ Martin said. ‘It grew out of that. He’s an idealist, you know, and he still wants to change the world.’

  ‘I thought he was a wild man who only cared about sex and drugs.’

  ‘He’s nothing like that really. The public want rock stars to be mad and bad when really they’re just nerdy musicians.’

  Whatever the truth, the project is a big one. It will take over a decade to complete, providing over 100 new jobs. Quentin, of course, calls it Toytown.

  ‘You’re only building for people who can take out mortgages. It’s paternalistic, nostalgic crap,’ he says.

  Maybe, though, she is just not the kind of person who is good at sharing life with another person. She knows she is irritating, but he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

  ‘Quentin says everything is my fault.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, because I’m “too posh to be a mammal”. But he’s the one who is complaining about the mud and so on, not me.’

  ‘You really like it there?’

  ‘Yes, I do, despite the murder in the woodshed.’

  Her mother snorts. ‘If you really like it, why not stay?’

  ‘Oh, do stay!’ Di Tore says. Back from Australia, and despite what seem like frequent shopping trips to Paris and New York, she has resumed the playdates and visits, dropping enough gossip about the people she knows to fill a dozen tabloids. ‘We need you here. I
t’s different for Gordon, when he’s not touring he just wants to relax here without other people, though he only has to click his fingers and about fifty assistants appear.’

  ‘So you think that the new academy will be good enough?’

  ‘Worth a try, I reckon. Just think, you could be designing your kids’ future school!’

  The build has started and now the foundations have been dug and concrete poured, work is going apace. It must help, she thinks, that Martin can actually make things himself: he’s respected locally as a joiner, rather than as an architect. His team are all men, local twenty-year-olds whom even the Army would hesitate to take on.

  ‘But can you trust them?’ Lottie asks. ‘One dropped a prescription for methadone.’

  ‘You know what they say: ex-junkies turn to booze, religion or hard work. It’s just a question of spotting which are the ones to choose work.’

  She soon sees the truth of this. However hard the Poles labour, the ex-junkies stay longer, toiling under klieg lamps, in sheeting rain and freezing cold.

  ‘If they do overtime, they’ll be able to do more than live with their mothers and drive a beat-up van,’ Martin says. ‘The young men here are almost unemployable because most have no skills or qualifications. If they don’t inherit a farm, all they do is work out, or take drugs.’

  ‘Where do they find drugs in the countryside?’

  ‘Half the weed in Britain comes from the West Country.’ Martin’s square teeth glint at her surprise. ‘Without it, many more farmers would be going bankrupt, you see …’

  Every conversation with him becomes a kind of lecture. His heart is in the right place, but she wonders whether this is one of the reasons why his marriage went wrong.

  They are having a last mug of tea in the Portakabin by the site. The road winding up out of town goes right past it, and even now is quite busy. She enjoys seeing not only cars and lorries but tractors and horses go past.

  ‘You know I’ve never done a build like this?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Martin says, ‘Really: you are overqualified. It’s great to have you on board. You should really be coming in as my partner.’

  ‘I don’t have the money,’ she says.

  ‘Well, one day maybe …’

  He blushes fierily, and her heart sinks.

  ‘It’s always the same,’ she tells her mother, later. ‘The bores fall in love with me, and I fall in love with the bastards. What a pain feelings are! But he’s my boss, and it’s awkward, because I do like him.’

  ‘My darling, he seems kind, and that is always the most important thing,’ her mother says. ‘Not whether he is charming, or amusing, or rich.’

  ‘Quentin isn’t any of those things either.’

  ‘You thought differently, at one time.’

  ‘I was mad. Love makes you mad. Now, I’m sane.’

  It gives her some satisfaction to see that it is Quentin who now collects Stella and Rosie in the afternoons, supervises their homework and makes their tea. They don’t even discuss this: she is the one going out to an office, and she is earning twice what he does at last. His ideas of parenting, however, are very different from hers. She is shocked to find he has been giving them cookery lessons.

  ‘Stop! They’ll lose a finger if that blade slips,’ Lottie says, horrified. His chef’s knives are lethal.

  Quentin ignores her. ‘Bruise the garlic clove, toss in the oil, then take it out of the pan when it turns yellow. Nothing tastes nastier than burnt garlic.’

  Lottie always burns the garlic because she gets bored. Anyway, Quentin may be a better cook than she is, but he’s absolutely rotten at washing up.

  The trouble is, the more her frayed nerves are repaired, the more she remembers what it had felt like to make love with him. I may never have sex in my life again, she thinks. She wishes it wasn’t such a depressing thought.

  This landscape with its mud and cold and winds and great, creaking trees fills her with a different kind of passion, inhuman yet bracing. A line keeps repeating itself in her head: Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. She doesn’t know who said it, but it feels true.

  When she had first come here, feeling like a pioneer woman alighting in the uncharted wild with her caravans drawn up in a circle, it had been very different. Both the landscape and the house had been the incarnation of her desperation. Now, familiarity is breeding content. She likes the casement windows set in the deep, thick walls, and the window seats that look down the valley. She has ceased to mourn her large modern kitchen with its granite worktops and shiny steel fittings. The Rayburn with its puttering murmurs is a warm, genial presence, and even the old brown furniture, with its speckled mirrors and sprinklings of woodworm, is more friendly than the smart veneered things from Heals which she had prized in London. Bit by bit, this dank, drab place is becoming a home. In the evening when the wood-burner is lit, with the new cushions, curtains and lampshades, it actually looks cosy. She has repainted the living room (red) and bathroom (blue) and the entrance (yellow).

  ‘I don’t see why you’re wasting your time on a rented property,’ Quentin says.

  ‘Because I am living here, and it’s what I do. I don’t care what you think.’

  ‘So, how is it going with Beardy?’

  ‘His practice does interesting work.’

  ‘He’s the sort of person who makes me want to eat a barn owl.’

  Lottie says, ‘He’s successful, which is more than can be said of you.’

  ‘I am successful too.’

  ‘Yes: nobody will give you a job. Anyway, the beams look good, painted white.’

  The biggest transformation, however, is in the kitchen.

  When the last dead rat had been found, it was located behind the pine dresser. She had been obliged to ask Quentin for help to move it away from the gable end, but the reward was unexpected: a big old window was revealed, facing south-west. Light pours in and, stripped of the ivy on the outside, it has given the kitchen the best view of all.

  ‘How odd that it was blocked up before,’ Xan said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Lottie answered. ‘Maybe it was to stop the wind.’

  ‘Amazing! And it was here all the time?’ asked Di Tore, dropping by.

  ‘Yes. Did you not see it on the plans?’

  Di frowns. ‘I think I didn’t look.’

  Naturally, for the 1000 acres of the Shipcott estate contain many other broken-down farmhouses and cottages, some of which will be restored and incorporated into the Trelorn development. Lottie can’t begin to imagine how much it will all cost, because Tore’s wealth is so enormous that there is no point in imagining it. Her relationship is with Di, and it’s a liking without envy. Would they have become friends in London? Probably not; here, however, they are just mothers who get on. Di makes Lottie laugh with her rude Aussie jokes; though discreet about Gore, she’s clearly fond of him.

  ‘It makes a difference that I’ve got money of my own. We aren’t married, even if people call me Mrs Tore. He’s a great dad, I adore him, but he knows that I can leave him if he misbehaves. I don’t want to know what he gets up to on tour, but I don’t think he has the same drive to climb every C-cup now he’s pushing seventy.’

  ‘It would never work for me,’ Lottie says.

  ‘Yeah, you’re a romantic.’

  ‘I think children are, too.’

  ‘That’s true enough. Tiger and Dexter would like us to be married. Maybe one day.’

  Di is still sorting out Shipcott Manor, and Lottie suspects that it absorbs a lot of the energy that would otherwise make her discontented. She clearly loves making a home, and the house, despite its overhaul, is still not finished. She has a man from the village to help with the garden, but no interior decorator. Sometimes she brings samples of fabric round for Lottie to help her choose.

  ‘You should have seen the state it was in! The old man who lived here before was living in one room, the kitchen, and it was hopping with fleas. But Gordon, bless hi
m, gets such a kick out of rescuing it – you know, his mum worked there?’

  ‘Someone did tell me, yes. That must be very satisfying for him.’

  ‘It is. He’s said to me that of all the things he’s ever owned, it’s the one thing that makes him feel rich – apart from his first Fender Strat.’

  ‘So how come Oliver Randall wound up living in Home Farm?’

  ‘Oh, they were friendly from way back. He used to work as a session musician with Gordon, years ago.’

  Lottie, who never listens to pop music if she can possibly help it, nods politely.

  ‘I was just wondering how Randall could afford to rent this place.’

  Lottie knows she is probing, but Di seems so open that she has to ask.

  ‘Easy. He didn’t pay any rent! Gordon wanted to help him, he needed to get away from London. He taught the boys piano, and me too sometimes.’

  ‘Why did he need to get away?’

  ‘Maybe he liked the quiet.’

  Lottie has a feeling that Di isn’t telling her everything. Maybe Randall had been in love with her: she’s so beautiful that it’s entirely possible. Lottie enjoys it as she might an exquisite painting, but a man might feel differently.

  ‘Was he attractive?’

  ‘Olly? Well, not really. He was like this timid animal hiding behind his beard, very gentle and sensitive.’ She turns away, sniffing. ‘Such a horrible, senseless murder. Nobody deserves that.’

  ‘It must have been dreadful. Were you … friends?’

  Di gives her a shrewd look, and her tears vanish. ‘We were, but not in that sense.’

  Lottie feels uncomfortable. ‘Sorry. I don’t tell tales, by the way.’

  ‘Not even to your husband?’

  ‘Especially not to him, as we’re getting divorced. I’m just intrigued, living in that house. Wouldn’t you be?’