Home to Roost

by Tessa Hainsworth

  She herds us into the farmhouse, once a Victorian rectory. It’s dilapidated and scruffy, but wonderfully homey and delightful. The kitchen is massive, and filled with an assortment of flowers Annie has picked – big white daisies, various kinds of orange marigolds, some blowsy red roses. Everything looks old, slightly shabby, but clean and comfortable, from the old-fashioned sink and stove, to the open homemade shelves, filled with herbs, spices, cooking oils, and all kinds of kitchen necessities. In the middle is an ancient butcher’s table, scrubbed clean and filled now with mugs for tea, a pile of delicious-looking sandwiches, buns, and cakes. ‘We’ll have a proper dinner tonight, so just dig into those, all of you. Where’s Pete?’ She goes to the door, gives a shout. ‘Pete, they’re here!’ I’ve never heard my elegant city friend bellow like that.

  She looks amazingly well, her face tanned, her cheeks rosy with health. She’s in a scruffy pair of jeans, but ones I recognise as being a very posh brand that she used to wear when she visited us in Cornwall from London. They’re muddy now and frayed at the bottom, as is the loose shirt she’s wearing that looks like an old one of Pete’s. Her hair is much longer than I’ve ever seen it and it suits her. She laughs when I comment. ‘It’s only because I haven’t had time to get it cut; it’s not some new style I’m trying out.’

  Then Pete comes in and there are more hugs and kisses all around, and more food brought out, and then a whirl of activity as we finally get up from the kitchen table. Annie shows us our rooms – plain furniture, simple wooden floors, old and quietly pleasant. Everywhere seems light and airy despite the mist; and the view from every window is of the ancient landscape of the moor with its hills, trees, and rocky tors. ‘Wonderful,’ I enthuse, and it really is. ‘I’m so happy to be here,’ I tell Annie.

  Later, we have a look around the farm. We see Timothy, the famous pet sheep with arthritis. Will and Amy have a quarter of a banana each to give him. Annie remembers their own pet lamb and asks how Patch is getting on at the farm in Treverny. I listen to the three of them talking, equally animated, and think that’s one of the things I love about Annie, her keen interest in everyone and everything around her.

  Like her enthusiasm for her new adventure up here on Dartmoor. After we’ve all taken a look around, Ben goes off with Pete to fill the cattle troughs with water, and Amy and Will run off to collect the eggs. Annie and I are on our own. ‘Are you really happy here?’ I ask. I know I’ve asked her this on the phone, but I want to look at her, be with her, as I ask it again.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she turns to me, glowing with contentment, and amusement, too. ‘It’s so weird, isn’t it? Who’d have thought it? I don’t miss London, my old life for a second.’ She stops, squeezes my hand. ‘You won’t get upset if I tell you I don’t miss Cornwall either? I miss you, and Ben, and the children, but I’m growing to love the farm and the animals. And Dartmoor is fantastic.’

  We wander around the farm together and I can’t get over how knowledgeable Annie is about it. ‘We’ve got about one hundred and fifty acres, but we’ve also got moorland rights for the sheep and cattle. It helps financially, too; we get subsidies for that. It’s a struggle – Pete’s uncle went organic about ten years ago so he’s pretty established, but it’s still tough. We’ve got about twenty cattle, mostly the black and white Galloways as they’re slow growing and survive well on the moor. And a few Aberdeen Angus. They’re small but hardy, good beef stock and good on Dartmoor as well.’

  Is this Annie I’m listening to? After we’ve had a look at the cattle and then the fifty-odd ewes, with Annie telling me how they sell the lambs both for meat and to organic breeders, I say, ‘Annie, can you hear yourself talk? Are you really you, my London friend, or have you turned into her twin country sister that I never knew existed.’

  She turns to me, eyes shining, ‘I know, I know, it’s crazy, isn’t it? I guess I never had a chance, before, to let this side of me out.’ She tugs at my arm. ‘C’mon, let’s go see the pigs.’

  We tease and chatter all the way to the pig house. ‘We’ve got ten sows,’ Annie says proudly. ‘And like the sheep, we sell to both organic meat suppliers and to breeders.’ The black and white sows look up at us as we pass the field where they’re rooting around in the grass and mud. Annie talks to them, coos to them, as if they were her children. Then she takes me around to another pig house on the other side where there is a sleeping sow and at least a dozen three-day-old piglets running about. ‘Aren’t they adorable?’ Annie cries.

  We watch them for quite some time as they jump about, play, squeal and nudge their mother to get up so they can have another feed. The sow ignores them, lying firm on her belly, getting some well-earned peace. Her brood certainly seem healthy and plump, not that I know much about piglets.

  ‘This one’s a good mother,’ Annie tells me, ‘but we have another one who isn’t. When she farrowed, gave birth that is, I had to be on call as Pete was out with an ailing ewe for quite some time. Every time the sow gave birth, I had to rush into the pen, grab the little one and gently toss it out of the mother’s way. She would have savaged it, would you believe.’ Annie looks grim at this deviation from her idea of piggy maternal love. ‘I had to make sure I kept well out of the sow’s way, too; she goes quite crazy and vicious when she’s giving birth. She would have had me, too.’

  I stare at her. ‘You did all that? You weren’t frightened yourself?’

  ‘Of course I was, the first time. I was terrified. But you get used to it. It was sort of exhilarating, you know?’

  I’m not sure I do know but Annie goes on, trying to explain, ‘It’s probably a bit like you were, that first day you were a postwoman. After living the high life of a career girl in London, there you were in Cornwall, in the sorting office at Truro for the first time. I remember you telling me all about it. You lost your van, you were terrified you’d never get the post sorted, or find your way about. But in the end, you were over the moon. You’d done it!’ She turns to me, looking earnest. ‘That’s how I felt.’

  I acknowledge the similarity, but add, ‘At least the other posties didn’t eat their young, like your scary sow.’

  I remain in awe of Annie’s bravery in the face of challenging pigs as we continue our wander around the farm.

  The week passes quickly. We’re all given chores on the farm – we’ve insisted on this – and we have a marvellous time as well as feeling we’re helping out. Pete gets Ben to help with a lot of fencing which is a job for two men. The children collect the eggs, feed the pigs, help fetch and carry water when needed as well as other odd jobs. Feeding Timothy his half banana is one of their favourite tasks, keeping them occupied for much of each morning. Annie and I gather masses of sloes; the trees are laden this year. ‘I read somewhere they should be touched with frost before they’re picked,’ she says, ‘but one of the local wives told me she picks them now, before the birds get to them, and sticks them in the freezer.’ She sighs contentedly. ‘I’m going to try to make sloe gin, for Christmas presents this year.’

  ‘Good heavens, Annie. How did you learn to do that?’

  ‘I haven’t yet. But I will. There are lots of friendly neighbours around to ask advice.’

  ‘Where? You’re totally isolated here.’

  She looks sheepish. ‘OK, well, the nearest is two or three miles away, but they’re still neighbours. Besides, there’s always Google. Loads of ideas there about sloes and every other thing.’

  ‘I’m surprised you have Internet access here.’

  She laughs, grabs me around the waist and whirls me round. ‘Oh Tessa, haven’t we been turned about! A few years ago, that’s the kind of remark I’d say to you, about living in Cornwall. Remember?’

  ‘I remember. Well, Treverny seems the height of sophisticated city life compared with Coombedown Farm.’

  After a couple of drizzly days, the weather brightens and we have some great walks on the moor. There’s a fine stone circle not far from the farm and we take a picnic there one day,
munching our sandwiches in the circle and feeling far away from civilisation. This Bronze Age site is quite a distance from the nearest public road, so we’re lucky, there’s not another person in sight on this part of Dartmoor.

  After we’ve eaten, drunk some great organic cider Pete brought along in a cool bag, with some homemade pressed apple juice for Will and Amy, the two men take the children off for a walk while Annie and I opt to be lazy, and lie against the stones soaking up the warm sunlight. I’m about to doze off, thinking that Annie is, too, for she’s been exceptionally quiet during lunch. But as soon as everyone is gone, she’s sitting up, alert, looking at me with barely-contained excitement. ‘I told Pete to take the others on a walk; I’ve got to have you alone for a few minutes, tell you myself first. Tessa, I’m pregnant.’

  I should have known. So that explains the glow, the radiance, the joy that’s been written all over her face the last few days. After we’ve hugged, and shed a couple of happy tears, she says, ‘I didn’t tell you when you first arrived as I wasn’t sure. I’ve had a couple of false alarms before, and I thought maybe I was too old to start a family. But I got Pete to pick up a pregnancy testing kit yesterday when he went to town, and did it this morning. It’s positive, Tessa. We’re going to have a baby.’

  There are more congratulations all round when the men and the children come back, and a toast is raised with more apple juice and cider. Annie says, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice that I kept off the cider at lunchtime and stuck to juice. I thought that would be a giveaway.’ I tell her truthfully I never even noticed.

  That night we four adults stay up late, talking well into the night. Old times in London, new times in Cornwall, and now in Devon. Pete listens contentedly to our reminiscences, offers some of his own about growing up in Cornwall. He, like Annie, looks aglow with happiness. Not only has his dream about running a farm come true, but he’s also married to the woman he loves and is now about to be a father. He a lucky man, and fortunate enough to know and appreciate this.

  On the day we leave there’s a nip in the air, a reminder that summer will soon be over. Already the days are growing shorter. ‘Won’t you be lonely here, come winter?’ I ask Annie.

  ‘With Pete?’ she says. ‘With piles of wood for the wood burner stacked up in the shed? Thanks to Ben’s help, by the way, for that. I can’t wait for winter. And then in spring …’

  She breaks off, too overwhelmed to speak for a few moments, then finally goes on, ‘All being well, God willing, in spring there will be our baby.’

  As we say goodbye tearfully – this has been quite an emotional reunion – I say, ‘Hey, Annie, you aren’t going to learn how to knit, are you? Sitting by the fire those long winter nights knitting little jackets for the babe?’

  She makes a face. ‘No way am I going to take up knitting at my age, thank you very much; I’ve already taken on enough new things. But hey, I’ll make stacks of blackberry jam. You should see the bramble bushes, full of berries this year. The cold winter, you know. Can’t wait till they ripen, won’t be long now.’

  Good old Annie, now into making jam. My head is whirling with all these changes in her as we cross the Tamar, leaving Up Country for Cornwall and home.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Harvest Moon

  SUDDENLY IT IS early autumn, and all the talk is of the coming winter even though the air and sea are warm, the land glowing with abundance, the trees slightly burnished, though still mostly dark green and full.

  It’s not as if anyone wants to hurry the seasons along, but we’ve all realised, after the severe early frosts of last year, the snows and blizzards throughout the winter, that it’s never too soon to prepare. In the village shop the talk is centred again on wood: what kind is best to quickly warm a cold house, which is best to slow-burn throughout the night if necessary, and where to find good quality firewood at the lowest possible price. As most of the people around here have wood burning stoves, this is a hot topic, no pun intended.

  Woody, the tree surgeon, has become a woodsman during this autumn. He has access to a small forest that he maintains for the owner, and in return gets to take out some of the wood to sell. He’s busy cutting down rotting or dead trees for next year while chain sawing last year’s wood into manageable pieces before delivering it. Holly helps him by loading and stacking when she’s not at the shop, for Nell has kept her on part-time until after New Year when the second homers, having spent Christmas at their first homes with family, rush down to Cornwall with friends to relax after the stress of the holiday. ‘Don’t see as how being with family be so stressful for folk,’ Nell grumbles every year. ‘All that holiday time, all them loved ones milling around, enough cash to pay for it all, obviously, since they can afford a second house – can’t see what there be to complain about, if you’re asking me.’

  No one is, but she tells us anyway, and because it’s dear Nell, we listen and agree. She does have a point after all. There’s a good deal of moaning about the stresses of life from the second homers, and Nell hears it all in her shop. ‘I do believe that lot expect me to feel sorry for them,’ she snarls at me, as if daring me or anyone else to disagree.

  Nell and I both got a shock a few days ago when Holly came into the shop with a shaven head. Nell said, when she got over her surprise, ‘So that be the latest hair style in Morranport, be it?’

  Holly, instead of bantering back with Nell as she always does, said seriously, ‘No. I’m raising money for charity. One of my friends got ovarian cancer, is having chemotherapy. She’s starting to lose her hair, like, so me and me mates, well, we want to, make her feel less self-conscious. And raise some dosh for a good cause, too.’

  Nell went to her, and to both Holly’s surprise and mine, gave her a huge hug. This was so unlike Nell – she’s not a touchy kind of person, far too feisty for that sort of display – that Holly couldn’t say a word. Finally, when she let Holly go, Nell said gruffly, ‘There now, maid, I got work to do, and so have you. But I got to say, what you be doing touches me old heart, d’ya hear? I’ve a good mind to do it meself.’ She chuckles. ‘Except that I’d be scaring the bejesus out of the customers! One of us in the shop be plenty, and you be the pretty one.’

  There’s a sense of ending all around this time of year, even though there should be a few weeks more of decent weather. It’s not just nature, the trees and leaves, it’s also the manmade things. Houses are being closed up, boats cleaned and put away. It starts happening slowly, a few at first, then, with the first real cold snap, usually after October half term, everything begins to shut down. Cafés in the seaside towns and villages close, except for the few catering mainly for locals which stay open all winter. But there are few of these, and fewer every year as the financial situation worsens. Pubs will struggle to keep going, but they are laying off staff, and closing rooms, keeping only one warm and ready for the odd visitor or local. In summer, it was easier to forget these tightened times, but now with the onset of winter, it seems everyone is reminded. There’s a feeling of hunkering down amongst us all, not just against the coming wintry weather, but also against the economic crisis that everyone predicts will hit soon, if not already upon us.

  In this hunkering down, there is also a congenial feeling of solidarity, of community. Customers give me sacks of blackberries they’ve picked and spare apples from their gardens, and in turn, I promise to supply them with blackberry and apples pies. I go blackberrying with the family and give the extra to Daphne who makes the best jam in the village. We trade and barter, and while we do this, we look at the sky, at the masses of berries on the holly tree, the mountain ash, and try to predict the coming winter’s weather. All the signs are that’ll it will be another cold one, but the signs can be misinterpreted. In the meantime, people who have a stretch of woodland trade firewood for an afternoon’s cutting and bringing it in. We’re all like squirrels, gathering our nuts and preparing for the months ahead.

  And now it’s early November. Great swirls, or
murmurations, of starlings darken the afternoon sky as they sweep gracefully over the yellow and red leaves of the autumn trees. Chrysanthemums of all shapes, sizes, and colours take over the gardens, and the Virginia creepers on some of the houses have turned a wonderful scarlet.

  Tonight in the village there is a Guy Fawkes bonfire and firework display. Ben and I will be on hand to help, selling hot cups of soup, while others are in charge of the fireworks. A lot of work goes into the evening, making sure everything is safely run, that nothing goes wrong. Yet despite all the many health and safety rules and regulations that the villagers say they’ve had to contend with over the past few years, it’s still basically the same simple format – a half hour of excited children milling about with sparklers, adults drinking cups of soup to keep warm, then the firework display, followed by the burning of the Guy – as it’s been since the old-timers were little ones themselves.

  But that will be tonight, and right now it is late afternoon and I’m at Poet’s Tenement, standing outside looking at the ailing holm oak and the rooks cawing around it, flying home in droves to their rookery. The clear sky, now golden in the twilight, seems filled with their black shapes, resounds with their raucous cries. It’s going to be a good night for the bonfire, and a full moon is already rising bright orange over the horizon. ‘Look, a harvest moon,’ Hector murmurs, to no one in particular.

  He and Edna, and Woody and Holly, have been standing here for some time, discussing the tree. I’m here to give the Humphreys an apple pie I baked from the windfalls I salvaged from their neglected old orchard. Woody has roped me in on the discussion, muttering in a low voice, ‘You’ve got to talk sense into them, Tessa. I can’t, and neither can Holly. She’s worried about them, too. So is Sydney.’