Hate Bale

by Stephanie Dagg

  She shook herself from her silly reverie. Lily would find herself a great guy when the time came. But Martha wished it would be sooner rather than later so that her daughter would stop traipsing from one end of the world to the other, stretching her mother’s heart-strings to breaking point.

  The medical was much more thorough than Martha had expected. She’d predicted a measuring of height, weight and blood pressure, but not the chest-listening, ear-peering, throat-scrutinising, reflex-testing once-over she got. She passed the eye test, with her glasses on, and managed to walk in a straight line for a couple of metres too. With a deliciously dimple-laden smile the doctor declared her to be in robust good health and signed her certificate with a particularly illegible flourish to celebrate. He airily pfffted away her concern about those immovable couple of kilos that had crept up on her uninvited but now refused to go. That was the only thing she could think of to mention when he asked her if she had anything else she wanted to discuss with him. She didn’t want to let him down when he asked so nicely.

  Her route back to the car took her past the small boucherie. She hadn’t been in this butcher’s shop for years, not since she and Mark had become self-sufficient in pork, chicken and turkey, and started making their own amazing sausages and bacon. Sausages… pork… pigs… bolt for the stable door. Martha stopped dead in her tracks as that thought process reached its conclusion. The hardware shop was right at the other end of town so Martha swung round and marched towards it. There was no one around to corner her for details about Daniel. The place was deserted. That was always the way on a Thursday afternoon. Everyone who intended to go to Bousseix that day came in the morning in order to bump into their cronies at the market and do some non-supermarket shopping. Martha thus had a hassle-free journey there, and back. There was only a very young assistant at the shop who was either ignorant of the local gossip or simply didn’t give a toss about old biddies being bumped off because he showed not the slightest glimmer of interest in Martha’s presence, other than to charge her a hefty sum for what was rather a feeble door bolt but the only one in stock.

  Back at the farm, Martha set to with the now fully-charged electric drill. As she’d predicted, the oak door and frame were both as hard as rock and the drill bit was glowing red by the time she finally succeeded in making a centimetre-long hole in it to accommodate the bolt. Longer would be better but neither she nor her tools were up to it. She screwed the bolt housing onto the door, only a bit wonkily, and located a suitable small padlock out of a jar of them in Mark’s ex-toolshed. The padlock went through a hole in the bolt slider and then through a raised metal loop built into the back plate. That would hold the bolt firmly in place in its housing, making it henceforth impossible for Archers’ fans to sabotage the pig fence. Job well done.

  Martha should have known that a day totally free of face-to-face encounters with Carol was too much to ask for. She’d pushed her luck to the limits making it till half past four. She’d just attached a scan of her crucial medical cert to her bike race entry, and paid the necessary but modest fee by PayPal and sent it all off into the ether, when the Cuthbertsons’ car crunched to a stop outside the holiday cottage.

  “Give it ten minutes?” Martha addressed Flossie, who was snoozing beside her. Flossie’s eyelid quivered sceptically in response. “OK, fifteen then.”

  And precisely fifteen minutes later there came a knock. Flossie’s tail gave a lazy, smug wag. Martha gritted her teeth and headed for the door. On opening it, however, the insincere smile she’d managed to force her features into morphed immediately into a genuine one. There stood Zack with his little sister, who was holding a bunch of flowers. And not ones picked from the garden either. A few years back some twins on an Easter family holiday had made a bouquet from every single daffodil and tulip in her garden. Martha had been devastated.

  Sophia smiled and held the flowers up to Martha. She took them and smelt them. “Oh, these are gorgeous. Thank you.”

  The little girl grinned, then squatted down to stroke Penguin, the black and white cat. Penguin had been hoping to take advantage of Martha being preoccupied to sneak indoors for a nap in a comfy chair. But the cat was fickle, and instantly decided that attention now was far more important. She rolled onto her back so that Sophia could tickle her tummy. This allowed Martha to fix Zack with a questioning stare.

  “Has your gran gone soft?” she asked quietly.

  “Heck, no,” he replied, with a look of alarm. “These are from Grandad. He heard people talking about you at the market this morning and apparently you found a murder victim yesterday.” His eyes were now alight with gruesome glee. “Did you really?”

  “Yes, I did, and it wasn’t nice at all,” said Martha firmly and with a frown, to quell any hope Zack might have that she was about to launch into the gory details. “Grandad’s got good French,” she added, to try and shift the main focus of the conversation off the grisliest aspect. Roy must have; French people spoke fast generally, but the added excitement of imparting misfortune that had occurred to someone else made them talk at breakneck speed. Add in the local accent and it all took some unravelling. Martha still struggled all these years on.

  Zack just shrugged. “Yeah, his French is OK,” he said dismissively. “And I told him about the pigs escaping yesterday, so the flowers are also to say sorry for Grandma being responsible for that, as well as cheer you up about the body. Grandad said people are saying he was stabbed with some sort of spikey thing?”

  “Yes, he was. A hay spike. Right through the heart.” Zack was obviously about to say “Cool” or something equally adolescent and inappropriate, so she quickly added, “Poor man. He was a very nice person.”

  Zack took the hint and toned down his response to “That sucks.”

  Martha nodded.

  “Oh, a warning,” Zack continued. Martha raised her eyebrows. “Gran will probably be round for some eggs later. And an egg-whisk.”

  “But there’s a whisk in the cottage,” protested Martha.

  “Not the right sort apparently,” replied Zack. “She’s after a French whisk.”

  “Well, I bought that one in France so that makes it French,” said Martha firmly. “Doesn’t it?” she added as doubt crept in. It had probably been made in China after all.

  “Nah, a French whisk is a different shape. Bit flatter. But if you haven’t got a French whisk then a ball whisk or a spiral whisk would do,” Zack continued.

  Martha started at him incredulously. For a laid-back, fifteen-year-old kid he knew an awful lot about kitchen utensils. Martha had always thought a whisk was a whisk, and that was that. She’d have to look all these other sorts up online.

  “My whisk is the same shape as the one you’ve got,” Martha told him, “whatever that is.”

  “A balloon whisk,” nodded Zack, knowledgably.

  “Your gran will have to do her best with her balloon whisk then,” concluded Martha firmly. “But eggs I can help with. I haven’t collected any for a couple of days. The hens are laying all over the place at the moment. It’ll take me a while to find them but I should be able to let her have half a dozen.”

  “I’ll help look for them,” offered Zack. “I’ll take Sophia back to the cottage and then come and give you a hand.”

  Martha noticed this wasn’t a question. It seemed the youngster was keen to get away from his family for a while.

  “Brilliant,” she smiled. “I’ll go and put these flowers in water and get a couple of bowls for the eggs, so see you in five minutes, OK?”

  Zack nodded happily, then gently unwound Sophia’s arms from around Penguin. She was about to lift the cat up to carry back with her. Penguin was grateful for the intercession. She enjoyed tickles but wasn’t keen on people being too touchy-feely.

  Martha could have done without the egg hunt this afternoon. She was now feeling weary from the bike ride and second expedition in town, on top of her disastrous night’s sleep. She popped another capsule into the Nespresso machine.
She didn’t normally like coffee in the afternoon but she was drooping and needed a quick pick-me-up. She arranged the white freesias and carnations from the bouquet into a vase, but dropped the obligatory lily in the swing-top bin. She hated the smell of lilies. They reminded her of the funeral parlour, and she didn’t want reminding of that. They smelt altogether too strongly of mortality. She sniffed. She could still smell the one in the bin so she removed the lily-containing black sack within it and tied that closed firmly. For good measure, she shoved it in the downstairs utility room. She’d take the sack up to the rubbish collection bins outside the main gate later.

  Despite herself, Martha enjoyed egg hunting with Zack. He was cheerful and chatty, and massively impressed at some of the places the chickens had ingeniously selected to lay eggs. Any of the spots you might reasonably predict an egg to be, such as in the laying boxes or on top of the two remaining hay bales in the barn, were conspicuously egg-free. The poultry instead in the last day or two had opted for the seat of the ride-on mower, a discarded paper sack on the tool shed floor, the middle of a clump of stinging nettles, right on the edge of the duck pond (and this was a turkey egg, not a duck’s egg) and Zack uncovered a huge pile under the gas tank at the back of Martha’s house.

  “There’s fourteen eggs here!” he called to Martha.

  She came over to see the assortment of brown and white eggs. There was one huge goose egg, and two tiny bantam eggs, while the others were all variations on a hen’s egg theme.

  “That one’s Cynthia’s,” said Martha, pointing to a long, thin egg, “and that’s Deirdre’s.” This time she indicated a football-shaped one with a wrinkly surface. “Mabel’s,” this was a dark egg with black speckles, “and Maude’s.” This was a delicate creamy-pink with a lumpy end.

  “That is so cool,” grinned Zack, “knowing who’s laid what. I didn’t know eggs could be so different. All I knew was that you could get white eggs and brown eggs, but I thought they were all the same size and shape.”

  “You can get maroon eggs and bluey-green ones too, but I don’t have any of the breeds that lay those. You get big double-yolkers sometimes, and occasionally tiny yolkless ones. The world of chicken eggs is a fascinating one,” Martha smiled.

  “This should keep Gran quiet,” said Zack, putting the eggs into his bowl.

  “I wouldn’t give her any poopy ones,” suggested Martha tactfully. “I’ll have those.” She knew from experience that guests were horrified at the sight of eggs with a bit of chicken poop on them. Martha always wanted to say, “Well, what do you expect for something that comes out of its backside?” but so far she’d managed to bite her lip. She also suspected that Zack planned on handing Carol the poopiest eggs he could find, so she picked them up quickly.

  Zack had the grace to look slightly guilty. She’d rumbled his plan to gross his grandmother out.

  “Don’t want her to throw them away and waste them,” remarked Martha.

  “True,” nodded Zack.

  They parted company. Martha was wiping her eggs clean before putting them in the fridge when the phone rang. She glanced at the caller number: it wasn’t either child or Lottie, so she decided to ignore it. Then it occurred to her it might be to do with Daniel’s murder, so was therefore likely to be urgent. She wiped her damp right hand on her tee-shirt and picked up the phone.

  “llo?”

  It turned out to be Delphine, from the holiday home rental agency. Mark and Martha had signed up with it for a bargain-priced five-year deal, and that period ended with the closure of this season. Martha had not yet renewed with them for the next year, let alone the next half-decade. Martha cursed herself for having answered the call. For the next ten minutes she was subjected to a persuasive argument as to why she needed to stay with the agency until the end of time. Martha yessed in what she hoped were the right places, and made vague sounds of agreement here and there, but she wasn’t really listening. She didn’t want to deal with this now. She was aware she couldn’t stick her head in the sand for much longer, and would have to let the agency know one way or the other. She didn’t quite believe Delphine’s claims that they were getting lots of queries about Martha’s cottage for next year, but certainly once summer was over then the more organised cottage-bookers would be looking at getting their next holiday sorted out. She ended the call by promising Delphine she would get back to her within a week, and then plonked herself down at the table with a glass of wine. She’d procrastinate for another evening.

  Chapter 8

  Martha had just come in from the morning livestock rounds and put on the kettle when there was a knock at the door.

  “Give me strength,” she muttered to Flossie, who twitched an ear but otherwise ignored her.

  Bolstering herself with the thought that, as it was Friday, she only had to survive the woman for another day, she opened the door to the inevitable Carol Cuthbertson.

  “Good mor—”

  “We can’t get out!” snapped Carol before Martha could finish her insincere greeting.

  Martha blinked, puzzled. Out where? They could clearly get out of the house because here Carol was, unfortunately, on her doorstep.

  “There’s something blocking your gate,” Carol explained, furiously.

  It was then Martha noticed the absence of their car. She glanced up the long, curving drive and could just see a glint of silver at the end. She was frankly quite impressed that Carol had walked back down the track, rather than get Roy to reverse along it to save her having to use her legs.

  “What sort of something?” asked Martha. She could only imagine that a bit of stick or a stone had got jammed in the jockey wheel at the opening edge of the oversized, heavy metal gate, making it seize up.

  “A bale of straw,” seethed Carol impatiently, like it was obvious.

  “A… what?” Martha hadn’t expected that. This didn’t compute at all. “Are you sure?” she couldn’t stop herself adding.

  “Of course I’m sure!” screeched Carol. “I expect it dropped off your tractor.”

  “That would be difficult,” riposted Martha snidely. The woman’s unpleasantness was contagious. “I don’t grow crops so I don’t produce straw. And my hay meadows are over there, away from the road,” she waved an arm towards them, “as is the barn I store them in. My bales don’t go anywhere near the gate!”

  “It hardly matters whose bale it is,” Carol changed tack. “Move it, now!”

  She turned on her heel and marched away.

  Muttering swearwords under her breath, Martha shoved her walking boots back on, whistled for Flossie and hurried up the drive behind Carol. She strode past her silently, and rounded the bend. She could now see that there was indeed a hay bale right against the gate. She carried on up to the gate with a frown and stared over it at the offending item. Who on earth had dumped it there? What was going on?

  She heard the car door open and seconds later Roy appeared next to her.

  “Bit of a pickle, eh?” he smiled.

  Martha looked at him. The smile was genuine. He really was a decent guy. How had he managed to saddle himself with a total bitch like Carol?

  “Does this happen a lot?” he went on. “Farmers playing practical jokes on each other like this?”

  That’s what he thought it was, a jolly jape of some sort. Farmers round here didn’t have the energy to waste on silly pranks like this, or the money to fritter away on using diesel non-productively. And this bale hadn’t got here accidentally, either. It hadn’t dropped off a passing hay wagon and rolled here. There was no tell-tale trail of hay leading to it, and anyway, it had been deliberately set on its end. This was decidedly weird and menacing. A hate bale rather than a hay bale. Martha shuddered inwardly but returned Roy’s smile.

  “No one’s played a joke like this on me before,” she remarked brightly, “but I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

  “Never mind just looking at it,” came the brisk, slightly breathless tones of Carol, who now joined
them, “move it.”

  Like Martha might be quite happy to leave her gate barricaded for the foreseeable future.

  “We have to go shopping, and I want be to back by noon,” went on Carol.

  Yes, thought Martha bitterly, so you can spend the rest of the day washing everything you brought with you using the water and electricity I pay for. Nearly all the guests did this. It was normal to see the washing line festooned with towels on a Friday. Martha was sure she often saw clothes hanging out to dry on the last full day of the holidays that she hadn’t noticed anyone wearing all week. It was entirely possible some groups brought suitcases of dirty washing with them just to get to wash it at someone else’s expense. Mark would always tell her not to be a noodle and get herself all worked up over it, but it really rankled and always had. The holiday cottage usually got between eleven and fourteen weeks’ worth of bookings a year, but during that time the temporary residents got through more water than Mark and Martha used to in a year, and their meter counted the water that went to the livestock in summer (water tanks of collected rainwater saw them through the winter but soon emptied when the hot, dry weather began) and into the above-ground swimming pool that they shared with guests. At the mere thought of that profligacy Martha’s right eye began to twitch.

  She glared at the hay bale, anger taking over from anxiety. Surely there had to be a perfectly illogical explanation for it being there, rather than a sinister one. She’d find out the story soon. In the meantime she had a bale to move, but how? Her gate opened outward and so she couldn’t get her ancient Farmall International tractor through it in order to do the removing, and this was the only way onto her land. She couldn’t get through neighbours’ fields onto the road either. She’d have to lift the gate off its hinges with the hay forks on the front of the tractor, deposit it by the hedgerow and then take the hay bale down to the barn. At least she’d be getting a free bale of what looked like good quality, fresh hay out of this mess.

  Putting the gate back on would be altogether trickier. She’d need to go and ask for help from Etienne, the nearest farmer to her about three kilometres away, or Adrien, the next closest at about four kilometres in the opposite direction, but probably both as it would be a heavy old job manoeuvring a large swinging gate back up on its hinges. But when she’d be able to assemble the team together was another matter entirely. The hay-making season was well underway, and had been for several days now. On her bike ride yesterday she’d passed field after field of newly mown hay drying in the sun, or being turned or baled. This area was a major cattle producing one so hay was an important crop. Judging by the hum of distant tractors in the background, everyone was still out in their fields today.