In a Land of Plenty

by Tim Pears

  ‘I’ve got no centre,’ he whispered to himself; I’m hollow, he thought. He saw other people’s purpose, the solidity of their being, and wondered how they’d acquired it. He saw they were at home in the world. He saw them change, and lose nothing.

  Just before Christmas of 1972 the art teacher organized an exhibition of her pupils’ work, including four of James’ photographs: under pressure from Miss Stubbs he’d experimented with long exposures and each picture was of a different, apparently empty classroom, except that when you looked closer you could make out the faint ghosts of teacher and pupils.

  Every artwork was on sale at £10, the proceeds to go towards a new pottery kiln. When Charles arrived at the private view he studied the results of his son’s photography for the first time, and was unable to work out why anyone would want to waste as much time as he knew James did on make-believe jiggery-pokery, as he described them to the headmaster. Until, that is, he noticed the red stickers on the wall beside them. Although Charles had never been to an art exhibition in his life he realized immediately what they meant, and ordered a set for himself.

  ‘I only paid for these because I had to give something,’ Charles told James when they got home. ‘From now on I expect one framed photograph a month, James. We’ll put them up in the hallway. Impress our guests, eh?’

  James wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or angry. ‘Hang on, Dad,’ he whispered. ‘I only printed those for Miss Stubbs. I don’t plan to print any more for a while.’

  ‘Nonsense, James,’ Charles countered, hand raised. ‘Simon was earning his living at your age. I support you: therefore, strictly speaking, the photographs are mine.’

  And Charles marched away, brooking no argument, leaving James silently fuming.

  There was only one person who could stand up to Charles. Sunday lunch at the house on the hill had become the family tradition Charles demanded it be. Judith Peach sometimes came, as well as relatives like Jack and Clare, and Zoe.

  Zoe usually arrived early, spending time with James while others were at church or Laura was helping Edna in the kitchen; and then, once lunch was served, it was only a matter of time before Zoe engaged her uncle in argument.

  Zoe still believed in the power of love, that flowers were stronger than bullets, that innocence is more truthful than experience, and that the best cure for capitalists like Charles Freeman would be to take their clothes off and smoke home-grown grass in the summer sunshine. She had, however, been impressed by German radicals and South American revolutionaries she’d read about (and whom she wished she could meet travelling) who, instead of quietly dropping out or growing disillusioned, as most of their generation had done, had gone just a little further and then found themselves at the opposite extreme, advocating the carrying out of ruthless acts of terrorism in the name of love and justice.

  So that Zoe’s arguments, however heartfeltly expressed, tended always to be somewhat confused.

  ‘The people who create wealth aren’t you and your kind, Charles,’ she told him, ‘it’s the workers who make things, and while you and your fellow shareholders live in the lap of luxury they’re like animals in cages in that disgusting factory.’

  ‘My dear, you’re old enough to have realized by now’, Charles replied, ‘that most people are like sheep, they need leadership, they’re only worried about their home and their hobby and if it wasn’t for men like me we’d still be in the Stone Age.’

  Charles conducted those arguments over roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in good humour: he found the idea of discussing politics with his niece faintly absurd, and so he argued with a big grin on his face, which only made Zoe furious.

  ‘I can’t help noticing,’ Charles smiled, ‘that you’re perfectly happy to come and eat this capitalist exploiter’s Sunday lunch, young lady.’

  Zoe dropped her knife and fork and pushed her plate away.

  ‘And I believe, according to various authoritative sources,’ Charles continued, nodding in the vague direction of his children seated around the table, ‘that you keep up the sordid tradition of charging people money to come and watch films in your picture palace.’

  ‘That’s the whole bloody point!’ Zoe spluttered. ‘We all have to operate by your rules, and that’s why we’re going to change them. We’ll have a world without money one day.’

  ‘That’s a very good idea,’ Charles agreed. ‘And, what’s more, it’s going to happen before too soon, I’m sure of it. Money’s a waste of paper and other resources, you’re absolutely right, Zoe. There’s a computer revolution coming: in twenty years’ time we’ll all have digitally coded credit cards, and there’ll be no need whatsoever for grubby notes and dirty coins to change hands.’

  ‘But, but,’ Zoe stammered, flustered and infuriated, ‘that’s not what I’m talking about at all. And you know it’s not.’

  No one else joined in those heated sessions. But James was enthralled. Usually he hated the tensions around the dinner table, they drove him to his darkroom, but Sundays were different. He loved the way Zoe stood up to his father, undaunted by Charles’ bulk, his power or his temper. James wanted to enter the argument but he was far too shy, even in his own home, and besides whenever he did think of some pertinent point, by the time he’d formulated it into a coherent sentence the two main protagonists had moved on.

  Once or twice James managed to interject some stumbling opinion, in support of Zoe, to which Charles responded with ridicule, his teasing treatment of Zoe moving up a gear to deal with his own son.

  ‘Zoe’s right, father,’ James hesitantly ventured. ‘Everyone can be responsible if they’re encouraged to be. It’s leaders who make people into sheep.’

  ‘Oh, it is, is it?’ Charles replied, leaning back in the chair and arching his eyebrows. ‘I see,’ he continued gravely. ‘In that case, James, perhaps you would be so kind as to explain. You’re clearly an expert. Might you furnish us with the relevant data, young man, make us party to your sources of research? We’re dying to hear. We await your words of wisdom with bated breath, James. The floor is yours.’

  James sat there flushed with tongue-tied frustration, surrounded by his siblings’ nervous giggles and embarrassment, until Zoe came to his rescue. She had little reason to thank James for his support, though, since his humiliation only made her angrier and Charles more smug.

  But just occasionally she found the weak spot in Charles’ armoury, his own Achilles’ heel.

  ‘If you’re so wonderfully responsible for all those poor souls,’ she proclaimed, ‘then presumably it’s your fault when someone gets injured or maimed or even killed.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Charles declared. ‘I set great store by our safety standards. As everyone knows.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Charles, I forgot, you are a caring capitalist after all. It’s a shame about that poor man who was squashed in the recycling plant last month.’

  ‘I’ve ordered a full enquiry!’ Charles bellowed.

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,’ Zoe sympathized, becoming calmer. ‘I know you weren’t responsible for the shoddy machinery; you’ve got your balance sheets to think of, after all, you can’t go around repairing faulty hydraulics, Charles. You’ve got your Profits to protect.’

  ‘I do everything I can!’ Charles roared.

  Zoe leaned forward across the table. ‘Profits killed him, you killed him, you shouldn’t be surprised that people call you a murderer—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘—because he died for the sake of profit, pure and simple, money killed him and it’s your money, Charles, and it’s got his blood on it.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Charles thundered, pushing back his chair. ‘You ungrateful ragamuffin! Coming here to insult me!’

  Zoe relaxed, half-closed her eyes at Charles, and in her ascendancy made a dismissive – and obscurely obscene – gesture at him that she’d learned in Zanzibar. At which point Charles’ face went a puce colour and he turned on his heels and strode out of the dinin
g-room, cursing all the way, leaving a table of relatives and offspring looking like embarrassed statues, except for Zoe smiling to herself and Alice saying, ‘What happened? What happened?’ as she struggled to find out what she’d missed, adrift in a world of her own.

  ‘I should get out of here; out of town,’ James whispered to himself. ‘I should go to the country, and photograph … animals.’ And then he remembered his bluff Aunt Margaret’s invitation to them all to visit her farm. He rang her up and asked if he could come out one weekend.

  ‘What did you say?’ she shouted down the line. ‘Speak up, boy, I can’t hear a word you’re saying!’ James had to pass the receiver to Alice, who acted as interpreter.

  One Saturday morning in March James caught a bus that passed within half a mile of the farm. The driver dropped him off on a country road in the middle of nowhere, opposite a narrow lane, and James lurched along it and then down a track marked RUGGADON FARM. He found his way into a yard blocked by a gaggle of geese hissing at him. There were eight or ten of them and they rushed waddling across the muddy ground, webbed feet slapping, flapping their wings. James was terrified and backed away; the geese followed after him only so far, to an invisible line that marked the edge of their territory.

  James stiffened his resolve and stepped forward, but the geese arched their necks towards him and stuck out their hissing tongues, and he retreated again. Surely, he thought, someone will have heard this racket and will come to my rescue.

  ‘Help!’ he cried, but he knew it came out as little more than a murmur. He wished he had a tripod with which he could defend himself; he considered trying to hide behind his camera in case it worked as a better camouflage with animals than with human beings. He took it out from beneath his jacket and raised it to his eye, and immediately felt safer. He took a step towards the geese and they again threatened him, but he knew he had to advance. He hadn’t loaded the camera yet, so he decided to adopt his old habit of taking imaginary pictures, in order to at least take his mind off the danger. He got the boldest goose, the one nearest to him with the longest neck, in focus, clicked, and marched forward.

  James lost focus immediately and had trouble readjusting on account of his own progress and the flurry of the geese’s wings and serpentine necks, and so it took him until he was right in the middle of them to realize that they were actually pecking at his legs. At that moment Margaret and her two farm girls emerged from their coffee break in the farmhouse, and they were rendered instantly helpless by the sight of a thin, hapless youth dancing awkwardly across the yard towards them with one eye closed, taking photographs of the geese that were biting him.

  Eventually one of the farm girls recovered herself and took pity on him, grabbing a stick and swiping it at the geese.

  ‘Shoo! Get away!’ she shouted. ‘Scat! Get!’ They hissed and waddled off resentfully.

  James stopped jumping. He refocused the lens and found himself being stared at by a blonde young woman with a mud-flecked face. He lowered the camera. She scrutinized him a moment longer and then turned over her shoulder to the others and shouted: ‘Looks like we’ve got a right townie here, Miss Marge.’

  Margaret’s was a small farm with a limited number of most species of breedable animal, assorted fruits and a variety of crops dispersed across her few acres, not because she was spreading her risk or was a believer in agricultural diversity, but rather because performing any activity for more than a couple of days at a time bored her. As a result she was unable to afford labour-saving machinery, and drove herself and her farm girls – a different pair of whom moved in every year for work experience between leaving school and going to agricultural college – like slaves. Their one compensation was that they got at least a little of just about every experience they were likely to need in the future.

  They introduced themselves to James.

  ‘Welcome to the Ark,’ said Joanna, his blonde saviour from the geese.

  ‘Welcome to Maggie’s Farm,’ said Hilary, who was shorter and thinner and had dark-brown hair.

  ‘Go on inside, James,’ Margaret told him. ‘Get Sarah to give you a coffee. We’ve got some mucking-out to do, haven’t we, girls? See you at lunch.’

  * * *

  The ancient farmhouse was a long, narrow, stretched-out building: there was a tool-shed at one end and a storeroom with an apple loft above it at the other; the living quarters were in the middle, entered through a wooden porch to the left of the centre of the wall full of muddy boots and a rack of torn and frayed jackets and coats. It gave onto a small hallway, with a staircase up one side, that ran straight through to the back door; on the left of the hall was a dining-room full of the best furniture, a dresser with what looked like an unused dowry of an immaculate dinner service and, around the walls, hundreds of unidentified rosettes of various colours.

  On the right of the hall was a huge kitchen. It took up two-thirds of the length and all of the width of the ground floor, and was the cooking, dining and living room all in one. The kitchen area was at the far end, with an Aga against the wall that kept the tool-shed beyond, where Margaret’s dogs slept, warm all winter. In the middle was a solid round table; while in the corner to the left of the door was Margaret’s desk laden with receipts and bills, and to the right a TV encircled by a sofa and armchairs that looked like they were gradually sinking and spreading towards the floor, their morale broken, submitting in defeat to the human beings who sat on them.

  The inhabitants of the house woke up slowly drinking tea around the Aga, ate their meals at the table, and spent their evenings in the comfy chairs playing cards and Scrabble, doing the newspaper crossword, knitting and reading, and drinking home-made wine. At night they dragged themselves upstairs out of the dozy warmth reluctantly, wondering if they couldn’t organize sleeping arrangements in the big room as well.

  Sarah, Margaret’s wartime comrade, presided over their female ménage: she was cook and housekeeper. She wore colourful aprons over floral dresses and rarely stepped outside the front door because she didn’t like getting muck on her polished shoes, and however much work there was to do on the farm Margaret never coerced her partner into helping, she just went out earlier and stayed out later herself.

  In fact it was some time before James realized that Sarah took complete responsibility for the back garden – a vegetable patch, flower beds and lawn. In complete contrast to the front of the house, it was neat and tidy, the soil as clean, the grass as manicured, as a suburban garden, not a farm in the middle of the country. It was kept in such good order that Sarah didn’t even need to wear gardening gloves to protect her delicate skin and painted nails, she just used a pair of yellow plastic kitchen ones.

  Sarah was as slight as Margaret was solid, and she treated their farm girls with a maternal fussiness, making sure they’d eaten their greens and wrapped up warm before she let them outside.

  ‘Don’t fuss so, woman,’ Margaret berated her. ‘I’ve a hard enough time toughening them up when they get here without you spoiling them.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mig,’ Sarah told her. ‘They’re just lasses away from home, not tough old boots like you.’

  She was right. Margaret dressed in thick cords and what appeared to James to be about five layers of cardigan, and a tweed jacket that’d lost its buttons and which on windy days she tied with baler twine. She treated the girls with an older sister’s presumption, when she wasn’t driving them like feudal serfs. When she came inside, though, Margaret left her authority along with her wellies in the porch, she spoke in a reasonable voice instead of barking, and she took neither issue with, nor indeed any apparent interest in, the household management, which she left to Sarah. Instead she sat in her chair, lit a cigarette and waited for tea.

  At first James found it hard to follow Margaret and the girls outside with his camera because Sarah urged him to stay indoors, saying, ‘What a skinny boy you are, James. Doesn’t anyone feed you properly at home? Look, I’ve made you some walnut cake, have ano
ther cup of tea, goodness, you don’t want to go out there, it’s blowing a gale.’

  The girls smirked and winked at him, and he was too polite to refuse Sarah’s kindness and go with them. As the weather grew warmer, though, he slipped out more easily and he drifted around the farm, Margaret granting him permission to take whatever pictures he wanted to. His preferred method – after the long apprenticeship of taking pictures with an empty camera – was simply to study his subjects through the lens before actually photographing them, and so he spent hours watching the various animals. James was entranced. They’d never had pets in the big house on the hill, not even gerbils or hamsters, and he gaped like a six-year-old at the self-important stupidity of guinea fowl, the humour of pigs, the awkwardness of ducks on dry land, the clumsy dignity of the cows, the prickly intelligence of the two horses, the timidity of the sheep, and the schizophrenia of the sheepdogs: meek supplicants after human affection, transformed when it was time for work into dervish persecutors of sheep.

  By May James knew every inch of Margaret’s farm, its fields either side of a meandering stream through a valley in the lowland wolds. All except for the furthest field, because across the fence lay the pine wood at the edge of Jack’s farm, where Robert came shooting some Saturdays with Stanley. James had never actually seen Robert there – and he preferred to catch the bus rather than ask Stanley for a lift, he preferred to keep them separate – but he’d heard them: the throttled cry of pheasants rising, their wings beating like old football rattles, and the dull cracks of the guns.

  James kept away from there. Partly because, although he couldn’t see in he knew people could see out, and he didn’t like the idea of Robert watching him. He could, though, see far enough into the woods to make out the carcasses of magpies hung on wire.