There were some smaller animals too. As well as Flossie, there were half a dozen farm cats, all former strays that had ended up on their doorstep and been adopted and neutered. There were four rabbits, left over from a brief rabbit breeding period a few years ago. The mum of one of Jared’s friends had insisted on Martha, evidently an animal lover, accepting a pair of hideous rabbits that her son now totally ignored. She assured Martha they were both females, but one of them obviously wasn’t as baby rabbits appeared one day. The adult rabbits were unfriendly and wild, and so they too ended up on the table. However, no one in the family thought much of rabbit meat. The only way they could eat it was by disguising its taste with additions such as chorizo and thick tangy sauces. Mark and Martha failed to separate the babies into same-sex cages in time, and so ended up with two more litters. Fortunately a farmer friend was happy to take on some of the animals. However, the inbreeding had resulted in some truly mini rabbits, which he didn’t want. And so those four, all females luckily, had stayed. They lived free in the alpaca field, and hopped into the barn at night for shelter. Martha and the kids had tried to catch them a few times. The one time Jared managed to grab one, it had started screaming. Having never heard a rabbit scream before, and not even realising they could do it, Jared had let go of it in alarm and it had scooted to safety. They didn’t try to catch them again after that.
And there was poultry too, far too much, but the birds were lowish maintenance. The four stately ducks and one figurehead goose served a useful traffic-calming role. Guests tended to treat the farm drive as an extension of the public road and to assume the same speed limits applied. Where her wonkily hand-painted ‘SLOW’ signs failed to have any effect, the quintet of solidly-built, slow-moving water fowl waddling sedately along in the way worked like a charm. To her frustration, at present the bantams, chickens and turkeys were refusing point blank to lay in their nesting boxes. Martha was having to hunt for eggs every time she needed some for cooking, or when guests asked for them. In the past the children had done this job but they were both far from home now. Rural France had been a cool place to move to fifteen years ago from suburban Leeds, even though the first six months at French school had been immensely tough going for Jared and Lily. However, they were both fluent within a year and had progressed through the educational system. They had emerged from university with degrees and, unlike their peers in the UK, without enormous debts hanging over them. But now, of course, they wanted to be where the action and other young people were. Creuse, with its largely decrepit population, wasn’t the place for them. Jared was now living and working in Marseilles. He had a lovely girlfriend, Blandine, and Martha hoped it wouldn’t be too long before she had to buy a hat for their wedding. Her lively, itchy-footed, petite daughter Lily was in Australia, doing a string of unpaid jobs for which she received board and lodging and the occasional tip. She was currently bottle-feeding some orphaned kangaroo joeys on a sort of roo sanctuary, as far as Martha could make out. She worried constantly for her daughter, although she knew she didn’t really need to. Lily was sensible and strong-willed. But Martha couldn’t wait for her to come back home, however briefly, before setting off on her next adventure. Would she ever settle down?
Martha pulled herself out of her reverie. “Well, thanks for your help, Zack. You’d better go back inside before you’re missed. And I need a cup of tea.”
“Yeah, Gran will be up soon,” Zack pulled a face. “It was fun. See ya later,” and with that he slouched back towards the cottage.
Martha noticed he was now cigaretteless. She hated people dropping fag ends around the farm, which happened a lot with the guests, and these days she didn’t hesitate to bring the subject up with offenders. But Zack had been a great help and he was essentially a good kid, so she scouted round for the offending item, picked it up to dispose of in her own bin and resolved to say nothing about it.
Chapter 2
Two hours later Martha was finishing her breakfast. The pig episode had drawn the attention of the other livestock, who had all begun demanding food and water at various levels of decibels. Worried that the combined cacophony might wake the dreaded Carol, Martha had set to straight away with the morning feeding and cleaning out ritual. Usually she’d feed herself first. But today she was last and she’d been wobbly with hunger by the time she finally sat down with coffee and croissants. Three croissants, and all with jam. Generally she made do with just one plain one. She was now feeling slightly guilty about being so greedy. She rubbed a hand over her satisfied tummy. Her waistline had expanded over the last year, and while she might be officially middle-aged, being fifty-three, she wasn’t ready to spread yet. Mark wouldn’t have minded, though. She smiled. He’d always said she was too thin, but if she really was thin then heaven help a fat person. She’d started cycling again recently, on realising that she’d got a bit complacent exercise-wise, relying on her activity around the smallholding to keep her in shape. It contributed, certainly, but it didn’t give her enough aerobic exercise. She and Mark had always enjoyed cycling. Nothing dramatic, just hour-long jaunts along the country roads, sometimes a bit longer taking in a café for coffee and a bun. She’d done nothing except get through each day at a time during the first two years of widowhood, but now she was starting, and needing, to get back into the real world.
She’d planned a bike ride for this morning, but thanks to Hermione emptying the bins of pig food she was going to have to go the farm supplies shop and restock instead. Harry had given her a pained look when she’d lobbed a bucketful of poultry granules into his field this morning. He’d eaten them, mind, but nonetheless registered his complaint. And that wasn’t all she needed to buy. The shop had a small hardware section and Martha was sure she’d noticed bolts suitable for fitting to barn doors there. She could fit one of those onto the outside of the stable that Carol had glibly let herself into last night and consequently caused all today’s disruption. She’d get the lockable sort to keep the old bat out in future. It would most likely take her an hour or so to fit the darned thing since she’d have to drill a housing for the bolt into the ancient oak door frame. The older oak got, the harder it got. Now that these farm buildings were heading rapidly towards their two hundredth birthday, the oak was like concrete. That reminded Martha: she’d better find the electric drill and put the battery on to charge.
That took half an hour, during which Martha constantly berated herself for not being more organised. She spent so much time just looking for things. Mark had been such a methodical and systematic person. Whenever he’d needed a screw of a certain diameter, or a hammer of a particular variety, or a hinge or a bolt or a paintbrush or a nail, or anything actually, he could locate it within seconds. His once-ordered tool shed was well on its way to chaos. Martha tended to dump everything on the workbench when she’d finished with it. Her defence was that she was generally either exhausted or furious when returning tools, frequently both as she wasn’t a natural handywoman at all, but it was basically very lazy of her. She resolved to do better.
It was about quarter past eleven when she set off in the old Renault. Mark’s gleaming pride and joy back in the UK, since coming to France it had become a workhorse, lugging hay, animals, building materials and rubbish whenever necessary. Now seventeen years old, its exterior was dinged and dented and faded, and its interior would never be free of ingrained animal hair or dust, but the engine was going as well as ever. The car sailed through its roadworthiness test every two years. It was worth its weight in gold.
As she drove past the cottage, she was amazed to see Carol waving at her. That would be the first sign of friendship all week. Then she realised that the waving was too vehement to be a greeting: Carol was flagging her down. Well, tough. Martha didn’t feel like being moaned at. Beside, she had a few words to say to that woman that wouldn’t go down well, and she couldn’t face a row this morning. She didn’t have time, for a start. The farm supplies shop shut at twelve. So she plastered a smile on her face and
waved back, pretending to misinterpret Carol’s gesture as an amicable one. She glanced in the rear view mirror as she rounded the gentle bend in the drive and saw absolute fury on the woman’s face. Maybe she could stay out a few hours, get lunch in a café somewhere. Delay coming back. Never come back… No. Martha pulled herself together. This was her home, for goodness sake. She wasn’t going to be driven out by this witch.
It was a beautiful, sunny June day. She wound down the front windows, cranked up the radio and felt her spirits lift. She began to sing along, stopping only when driving through the small village of La Bellette for the sake of its inhabitants. A few kilometres further along she came to a narrow, bendy stretch of road that plunged steeply down to a tiny but determined stream and then reared up again. She’d nearly slithered into that stream once on a freezing winter’s day when she’d hit a patch of black ice so she disliked this part of the journey. As she always did, she slowed right down and hugged the verge on her side. And as well she did today, because as she rounded the right-hand bend she saw a small red car hurtling towards her on her side of the road. Its driver, a young man, had taken the preceding corner too fast and been hurled outwards. Martha veered sharply to the left, bouncing over the rough, grassy verge and scraping against the thick holly and hawthorn hedge. Yet more scratches on the poor old car. The red car veered too, and there could only have been millimetres between them as it careened by. Martha steered back onto the road, yelling obscenities after the retreating car. She was shaking slightly – that had been a very near miss. When she and Mark had first moved over, they’d been struck by how much better French drivers were than their English counterparts, on the whole. They actually waited at junctions and didn’t pull out in front of you at the last moment, thoughtfully indicated at roundabouts and generally obeyed speed limits. Over the last few years that had been starting to change, in Martha’s opinion, and this moron proved her point.
Muttering angrily to herself, she rounded a couple more bends and then gasped. A cyclist was climbing out of the ditch on the right hand side of the road, dragging his bike behind him. Another victim of the red car? She felt she should offer assistance to this fellow sufferer. Fortunately there was a convenient field entrance just ahead of her that she could pull into. She parked and hopped out of the car. The cyclist was now trying to disentangle a long trailing bramble that had caught in the bike’s back wheel. She bustled across the road to him.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Can I help?”
The cyclist straightened up and turned to face her. Martha was slightly shocked to see that he was wearing one of those tubular face masks, pulled right up to his eyes. It was decorated with a garish red skull. Besides having no taste, surely the guy wasn’t cold on this lovely warm day? Or maybe he was wearing it to filter out dust and pollen. Not my onions, she told herself firmly, and smiled inwardly at how easily that very French expression had become part of her repertoire. It was the Gallic equivalent of ‘not my business’.
“Some idiot in a red car cut me up,” he declared angrily, and somewhat indistinctly through his mask. “If I hadn’t swerved into the ditch, he’d have knocked me off.”
“That’s dreadful,” Martha sympathised. “He nearly rammed my car on a corner.”
“Did you get his number?” demanded the cyclist.
“Sorry, too busy taking evasive action,” shrugged Martha. “Didn’t really get a good look at the driver either. All happened too fast.”
The cyclist gave her a glare somewhere between accusatory and disappointed. Martha’s hackles rose slightly. But then, she reminded herself, accidents left people angry. Still, she was an innocent passer-by offering assistance so it wouldn’t kill the bloke to be polite.
“Well, if you’re sure you’re OK, I’ll be on my way,” she snapped briskly.
Skull Face backed down a little. “Yes, I had a soft if prickly and stingy landing.”
Martha glanced into the ditch which was filled with fairly equal amounts of nettles and brambles. Good, she thought uncharitably. That would leave him with some discomfort for a while. Her eye fell on his bicycle. It looked sleek and expensive, and it had unusually shiny black tyres.
“Your bike still in working order?” Martha enquired.
“Everything looks fine,” he answered quickly, not even glancing at his machine. He clearly wanted her gone, probably due to embarrassment at either being caught climbing out of a ditch, which had no dignity attached, or because a mere woman thought he needed her assistance.
“Well, take care.”
Just as she was turning to go, the cyclist stretched down to pick up his sunglasses from the verge. They must have been catapulted there during his fall. His long sleeve rode up his wrist slightly and, as well as a plaited leather bracelet, revealed a nasty gash.
“Oh, but you’re hurt!” Martha couldn’t help exclaim. “That’s looks like it might need stitches.”
“I told you, I’m fine.” The cyclist pulled his sleeve down firmly. “It’s just a scratch.”
Martha opened her mouth to protest, but quickly shut it. The cut didn’t seem to be bleeding much so if Skull Face the Ungrateful didn’t want her help, then fine.
“Goodbye,” said Skull Face dismissively, and went back to disentangling his wheel.
Martha snorted loudly and stomped back to her car, resolving that the next time she saw a cyclist climbing out of a ditch, she’d shove him back in it. But at least she had something to tell Monsieur and Madame Frobart when she got to the farm supplies shop. They were a lovely couple, a similar age to Martha, who always enjoyed chatting with their customers. Murielle Frobart had definitely been good for Martha’s French, which needed all the help it could get, as together they righted the wrongs of the world while Martha paid for her purchases.
Five minutes later Martha pulled into the shop’s yard. It was empty so she drove close to the entrance to the livestock feed shed. This was a triple-garage-size, corrugated iron building. Opposite it was the portacabin that acted as the office and cash desk. Further along was a large brick garage which housed pet and poultry food, and the various farm-related hardware that the Frobarts sold. This included everything from teats for bottle-feeding lambs to attachments for tractors. It was an agricultural emporium.
Martha stuck her head in the office but no one was there. She glanced into both buildings from their doorways but again saw no signs of life. That wasn’t unusual. It was a small, friendly enterprise that, despite all the odds, still ran on trust. The Frobarts were often both off doing various things behind the scenes, leaving the shop unattended. Martha walked down the yard to see the chickens in a coop at the far end. Madame Frobart loved chickens as much as Martha did. She had a range of exotic breeds – Silkies with their fluffy heads, Pekins with their frizzled feathers, enormous feathery-footed Brahmas and a couple of the all-black Ayam Cenami chickens. Personally Martha found them a bit grim, what with black crests, wattles, beaks, tongues – everythings. Their skin was black and apparently all their organs were too, something Martha didn’t need to see. However, they were striking in a weird, Gothic sort of way.
Martha went back to the car, waited a few more minutes, then decided to load up the sacks of food herself. She’d done that before. The Frobarts trusted her enough to accurately report what she’d taken. So she borrowed their trolley and soon three sacks of maize, three sacks of pig pellets and three sacks of wheat sat in the back of the car. Martha was hot and sticky after the lugging, so she returned the trolley and then went into the deserted portacabin. Still no one around. Maybe there’d been an emergency of some sort. She hoped not. Most likely, she comforted herself, Daniel Frobart was off delivering a bulk feed order somewhere in his ancient flatbed truck, and Murielle had darted off to grab some groceries or check on something at home. They lived at the far end of the village.
Still, she’d now been hanging around twenty minutes. Martha was about to leave a cheque for what she reckoned was the right amount, with a not
e that she’d pop by in a day or two to make up any shortfall, when she remembered that she needed that door bolt and some chick crumb. The eggs in the incubator would be hatching in four days’ time, so she’d better have something in for their current occupants to eat after they’d battered their way out to daylight. She sauntered into the brick building. The shelves of products were stretched from left to right across the interior, so Martha headed right to the aisle at that end. As she walked down it she glanced to the left to see what each set of shelves had to offer. Other than door bolts, a very robust one of which she selected to deter future fence-unplugging attempts, nothing else in particular snagged her attention there.
So as not to waste any space, there were narrow shelves along the side wall displaying mainly seeds and small gardening implements. A packet of pumpkin seeds caught Martha’s eye. A late frost had killed off the first set of seedlings she’d been nurturing in the greenhouse. Her fault: she’d forgotten about the sneaky frost saints, St Mamert, St Pancras and St Gervais, who could bring sub-zero overnight temperatures on their feast days in mid-May. The next set of seedlings had been demolished by the ducks, who’d bad-temperedly barged their way through the not-properly-latched door. They’d laid waste to not just the pumpkins, but also everything else that was growing in there – tomatoes, lettuces, peppers and carrots. Martha had been furious, and, had the appropriate citrus fruit been sitting in her store cupboard that day, it might easily have been duck à l’orange for tea.
Hate Bale Page 2
