A Country Escape

by Katie Fforde

  ‘The cost of the funeral is the responsibility of the estate,’ said Mr Addison. ‘So I’m in charge and most of it has been prepaid.’

  ‘Good,’ said Fran. ‘I’m sure we can trust you not to be mean.’

  ‘Do we have a date yet?’ asked Roy. ‘And do we get a choice? I have some business I need to attend to.’

  ‘The vicar is checking availability with the organist and bell ringers,’ said Mr Addison.

  ‘Bell ringers? Like a wedding?’ asked Fran, confused.

  Mr Addison smiled. ‘Not like a wedding. Amy wants traditional muffled bells and the years of her age tolled out. Although strictly speaking it would have happened just after her death.’

  ‘Goodness me, she was a one for tradition,’ said Issi. ‘I admire that. Not ashamed to be old school.’

  This made Fran smile. ‘I’m not sure Amy would recognise being referred to as “old school”, but she certainly was.’

  Roy got up. ‘Are we done? I’ve got things to do, people to see.’

  ‘I didn’t realise people actually said that in real life,’ muttered Fran to Issi.

  As Roy strode out, Mr Addison said, ‘I think he must have heard that expression on the television.’

  Fran looked at Amy’s trusted solicitor, knowing he knew what she was burning to know. But she couldn’t ask.

  ‘We’d better be going,’ she said, looking at Issi. ‘We’ve got a funeral to sort out.’

  ‘Just follow the instructions and all will be well,’ said Mr Addison.

  ‘We could have asked him who was going to get the farm. He has the information,’ said Issi, later.

  Fran shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to tell us and it would have been cheating.’ She looked at her friend. ‘And while we don’t know we can hope.’

  The next few days were full of seeing people, accepting condolences and baking. The baking was partly for comfort and partly to supply the seemingly endless line of people who came to pay their respects.

  Roy took no part in this. He was off, wheeling and dealing, while Fran, assisted by Issi, made tea and served cakes, scones, biscuits or whatever Fran had made when she was up at six in the morning.

  Although the visitors were very time-consuming – Fran hardly had time to make cheese – she didn’t resent their coming. Every one – or pair – had some little anecdote about Amy that helped build up a picture of what she’d been like before she got too old to work the farm properly.

  Issi had gone through all the photographs and put out the ones of Amy, and these were lifted and inspected by the visitors, which was always followed by an ‘I remember when …’ or ‘I recall Amy …’ or ‘Mrs Flowers once …’, depending on how they’d addressed Amy when she was alive.

  It was relaxing to sit in the sitting room, with the fire going (not that it was really cold but it was comforting to have it burning away), drinking tea, talking about Amy and sometimes weeping.

  She’d been much loved in the area and even her more elderly friends found someone younger to bring them to the farm.

  As Fran said to Issi, ‘It was like watching a film of Amy’s past life. Whoever gets the farm in the end, I wouldn’t have missed these days finding out about her.’

  Fran had walked up to look at the quarry after one of these sessions, wanting time to process all she had learnt about Amy since her death. She couldn’t help feeling sad that she had missed Amy’s best days but there was no point in bemoaning things that couldn’t be changed, and at least she knew a lot more about her now. Amy had been a feisty, go-ahead woman, who mixed skill with instinct and produced a prize-winning herd. She was a role model and Fran realised Amy always would be one to her, even if she didn’t inherit the farm. Amy’s strength of character was what had got her through a hard life.

  Fran was admiring the wild flowers that filled the field and the hedgerows, frothy white cow parsley at the edges, yellow cowslips in the middle, knowing they were there because of Amy’s traditional farming methods, wondering how she ever found time to make wine out of the cowslips, when she heard raised voices floating up from the farm. She ran down to see what was going on.

  There was a trailer in the yard with the ramp down. Roy and Tig were facing each other, both looking as if they might throw a punch at any moment. Two other men, who had obviously come with the trailer, looked on, half excited at the prospect of a fight and half confused.

  ‘What is going on?’ said Fran, out of breath from her rapid trip down the fields.

  Roy faced her. ‘Tell Tig he has no bloody right to stop me from selling animals that are mine!’

  She turned to Tig.

  ‘He can’t take the bull. He was born on this farm and he’ll die on it.’ Tig’s voice wasn’t loud but his words had a lot of power.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Fran. ‘Roy? You can’t sell animals that aren’t yours.’

  ‘They’re as good as mine!’

  ‘What makes you say that? We don’t know whose they are, do we?’ Panic struck her. Had Roy already heard that he was going to inherit?

  Roy exhaled deeply, as if he was facing very stupid children who needed things spelt out for them. ‘I know I’m going to inherit, OK? Now get that bloody bull into the trailer. But carefully – I’m getting a lot of money for him.’ He turned on the trailer drivers. ‘You can tell a bull from a cow, can’t you?’

  ‘Not sure you can,’ said Tig.

  ‘Listen, mate,’ said Roy furiously, ‘you can bugger off out of here! You’re living on my land in one of my houses. You have absolutely no right to anything. Now if you know what’s good for you you’ll help these guys get those animals into the trailer!’

  ‘Roy!’ Although she felt ready to tear Roy limb from limb she knew it wouldn’t help. She tried to keep calm. ‘What do you know that none of the rest of us do?’

  Roy groaned. He was obviously having a trying morning; things weren’t going to plan at all. ‘I don’t know for a fact. That bloody solicitor wouldn’t tell me. But what I do know is—’

  Before he could elaborate further, Issi drove up in Tig’s car, parked as best she could in the space and got out. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘This clown’ – Tig gestured towards Roy – ‘seems to think he can sell Lorenzo and five heifers as if they were his.’ He paused, his anger almost visibly throbbing under his measured tones. ‘They haven’t even sent a big enough trailer.’

  ‘But Roy can’t sell the cows, can he?’ said Issi. ‘He doesn’t own them.’

  ‘I do own them, bar the shouting,’ said Roy, shouting.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ asked Issi. ‘Surely no one owns them at the moment.’

  Roy swore again. ‘Wait here!’ he commanded and strode into the house.

  ‘As if we were going to run away and hide,’ said Fran. She paused. ‘Although I do quite like that option.’

  Tig and Issi looked at her as if she wasn’t taking the situation seriously enough. She swallowed. She was frightened and it did sometimes make her flippant. She cleared her throat. ‘Surely you can’t move cattle without loads of paperwork anyway?’

  ‘True. And I’ve got the paperwork at my house,’ said Tig. ‘Even if he does own them he can’t move them without me agreeing.’

  ‘I think you had better go home,’ said Fran to the two men who were getting increasingly uneasy. ‘You’re not going to be able to take any cattle away today.’

  ‘We’re not going unless we’re paid,’ said one of them. ‘In cash. As agreed.’

  ‘Do you think one of us should go and see what Roy is doing?’ said Issi, standing as close to Tig as she could.

  ‘No,’ said Fran. ‘He’ll either find what he’s looking for or he’ll have to come and tell us he hasn’t found it.’

  A pair of buzzards mewed high in the sky and tugged at Fran’s already damaged heart. How would she feel if she had to leave here? More to the point, how would Tig feel?

  At last Roy came out of the hou
se with a piece of paper in his hand. He thrust it at Fran. ‘Here. Have a read of that.’

  It took her a few seconds to realise she was looking at a letter from Amy. It had been sent at the same time as the letter she had received when Amy was looking for someone to leave the farm to. She read it as quickly as she could given the faded ink and Amy’s handwriting.

  Roy snatched the letter back before she’d quite finished reading it. ‘I’ll tell you what it says and I’ll read this bit aloud: … but because you are male, and I feel strongly that property should pass down the male line, I will leave the farm to you unless you turn out to be quite unsuitable.’

  No one spoke.

  ‘Well, you are quite unsuitable,’ said Issi at last. ‘You don’t love the farm like Fran does. Amy would be mad to leave it to you. You’d sell your old grandmother, let alone some land in a country you don’t even want to live in.’

  Roy gave her fake smile. ‘Amy never knew that. She was convinced I’d shed my last drop of blood to look after the place. It’s mine.’

  ‘But you still can’t sell the assets before we know for sure,’ said Fran. ‘And there’s probate to consider.’

  ‘And even if you could,’ said Tig, ‘I won’t give you the paperwork to move these beasts.’

  ‘You’ll have to, after the will has been read,’ said Roy.

  ‘It doesn’t change anything,’ said Fran, who was now feeling sick. ‘You can’t sell the cows now. I suggest you pay off the drivers and learn to be patient. It’s not long now until you’ll know for certain. Just don’t count your chickens – or should I say cows – until they’re hatched.’

  Then she walked back into the house, her back straight, her guts churning, knowing her days on the farm she had come to really love were numbered.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A week had passed, and it was the morning of the funeral, and in spite of the sadness of the occasion that was to come and the possible – probable even – ghastly outcome to follow, Fran felt oddly positive.

  She found Issi in the kitchen, making tea, looking anxious. Fran realised all over again that Issi had far more to lose than she did. Fran would be devastated to lose the farm but she had Antony, who had a house of his own. But Issi and Tig would be really stuck if it all went the wrong way.

  ‘How are you feeling, Is? And what about Tig?’

  ‘You know him; he’s not saying much but he’s worried. I don’t think he’s even worried for him – us – it’s the cows. They’re like family, almost. He knows them all, who their mothers and grandmothers were.’

  Fran put a quick hand on Issi’s arm. ‘I know Antony will find something for Tig – maybe even start a herd of cows himself. It’ll be all right.’

  ‘I know. But it won’t be the same.’

  Fran smiled. ‘You never know. Perhaps Antony will buy the herd and Tig will keep his family.’

  ‘That would be good.’ Issi looked curiously at Fran. ‘I must say, I was expecting you to be much more gloomy about it all. I mean it’s great that you’re not, but why?’

  ‘It’s the hard cheese. Making it last week with Mary and Erica was so brilliant.’ Fran paused. ‘Apart from it being so satisfying and interesting, it was healing, us three women, working together, crying sometimes. And then we all walked up to the quarry together and put it in to mature.’

  ‘I’d forgotten when you did that,’ said Issi. ‘I was doing something with Tig, but that sounds lovely.’

  ‘It was. And it’s a sort of two fingers up to Roy. It’s there, in the quarry, waiting to mature, and he may never know about it. It should be turned every day for three weeks and if Roy’s still here in a year, I’ll come back in the dead of night and steal it.’

  ‘And I’ll come with you.’ Issi took out some bread. ‘Do you want toast? I had breakfast with Tig but I wanted to get dressed here with you. I have a selection of suitably gloomy items to choose from.’ She cut a slice of bread and put it in the toaster. ‘Amy is very old-fashioned, not saying anything like “no black please”.’

  ‘She is – was – very old-fashioned in many ways. Wanting to leave the farm to a man, for example. But in other ways she was a trailblazer! Many women would have given up the farm when their husband died, or found another husband to run it for them.’ She sighed.

  ‘Did you get your eulogy written?’ asked Issi.

  Fran suddenly felt less positive. ‘Yes. It’s very short and simple. I just hope I get it out without breaking down.’

  ‘You don’t want Roy—’

  ‘No,’ said Fran, just as Roy came into the kitchen.

  ‘Are you girls making coffee?’ he asked.

  ‘I think if you’re going to inherit it, you should learn your way round this kitchen,’ said Fran.

  ‘No point. I won’t be keeping it.’

  Rather than have Roy cover her kitchen – she felt it was her kitchen – with coffee grounds and mess, she elected to make another cup for him. She realised it wasn’t only Amy who was a mass of contradictions.

  It had been arranged that Seb and the funeral cars should drive to the outlying farms and villages to pick up people who wanted to go to the funeral but didn’t have transport. There had been quite a long list.

  When Issi had said to Fran and Antony how kind this was, Fran said, ‘Well, this way you and I don’t have to travel in a funeral car with Roy. I don’t think I could have borne it.’

  So Antony was taking Fran, while Issi and Tig were taking Tig’s mother Mary. Roy was making his own way, and Fran wondered if Megan was going to drive him so he could drink at the wake. But seeing him in his suit, borrowed from a mate and far too loud for a funeral, stopped her. He looked like a man on his way to the bank after winning the jackpot at roulette. She hoped he wasn’t going to win anything but not with any conviction.

  Antony and Fran had hardly seen each other recently, so when he came to pick her up to take her to the church, for a few moments they just enjoyed the bliss of being together in silence.

  ‘I just hope I don’t make a complete fool of myself and sob uncontrollably,’ said Fran after a few minutes.

  ‘That would be fine. No one would mind. Although Amy might think you were making a fuss.’

  She laughed gently. ‘She would. At least she won’t have to accuse Roy of displaying unseemly grief.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ said Antony, smiling. ‘Although he may surprise us all by breaking down in tears.’

  ‘I wish I could believe that was likely to happen!’ Fran smiled back at him, in spite of everything.

  Antony glanced at her. ‘I will look after you, you know. Afterwards.’

  She nodded. ‘I know. To be honest I’m more worried about Tig and Issi. They stand to lose more than a job, but their home. And of course, as Issi said to me, the cows are like family members to Tig.’

  Antony didn’t say anything reassuring, but just put his hand on hers for a second and squeezed it. Without asking, she knew he thought Roy would get the farm. She did too.

  The church was completely full. Although they weren’t late, Fran and Antony were nearly the last to arrive. People had obviously been aware of Amy’s popularity and got there early.

  Fran spotted Seb, looking magnificent in a dark suit, surrounded by a cluster of old ladies, sending him adoring glances from time to time. It made her smile inside. It was a very sad occasion, but it was also a day out and a chance to meet up with old friends. Funerals should be enjoyed, she felt.

  She was dreading giving the eulogy. The thought of Roy doing it – and in some ways it would have been more appropriate – was too awful to contemplate. He hadn’t ever really understood Amy, Fran felt. To be fair, Amy was tricky, but to listen to him spout a series of clichés about ‘a wonderful old lady’, when she was so much more, was unbearable. He hadn’t objected at all when she said she’d do it.

  It was brilliant having Amy’s choir there. They sang the hymns vigorously which meant anyone too overcome to sing didn’t have
to worry. Fran sometimes could join in but sometimes her throat closed and only tears came.

  Eventually, Fran was beckoned forward by the vicar. It was time.

  ‘Chin up, chicken!’ Antony whispered and she couldn’t help smiling. She knew it was the last thing he’d say usually and meant it to stop her feeling gloomy.

  She walked up to the lectern and began.

  ‘I didn’t know Amy long, but it didn’t take much time to realise what a very admirable woman she was. A role model …’

  She got through it without crying, but when the congregation applauded as she walked back to her seat she couldn’t stop herself and hid behind Antony’s very large, ironed white handkerchief.

  ‘That was a wonderful do, dear,’ said an old lady to Fran. ‘Worthy of a great woman. How were you related?’

  ‘Distantly, I’m afraid,’ said Fran, more afraid than she cared to express. If she were more closely related, what lay ahead of her would have been less daunting.

  Antony appeared at her elbow. ‘Darling? It’s time to go to the solicitor’s.’

  ‘To see what’s in the will,’ Fran explained to her fascinated companion.

  ‘To see who gets the farm, do you mean?’ The old lady’s eyes opened wide at the prospect of a bit of upset. Then she grew more serious. ‘I do hope it’s you, dear. You’re liked in the community.’

  After some goodbyes, which threatened to become protracted, Antony led her away by the elbow.

  ‘I don’t think the community around Hill Top really knows me that well,’ said Fran, ‘but I don’t think Roy would contribute much.’

  ‘Apart from some executive housing,’ said Antony.

  Fran shuddered.

  Although they hurried, everyone else seemed to be there already when they arrived in the meeting room at the solicitor’s office. Mr Addison was at the head of the table, with Roy on his right. Issi and Tig were sitting together and Fran suspected they were holding hands under the table. Rather to her surprise, Moyra Jenkins, manager of the care home, was also there. Fran and Antony sat down. It wasn’t a big room or a particularly big table but Fran couldn’t help noticing that only Mr Addison and Antony looked comfortable in their clothes. They were accustomed to wearing suits; no one else was, really.