Eleven
To Do
· Name for action group: Brambleton against Richard’s Factory?
· Objectives
· Approach Richard?
· Meeting with local councillor
· Draft a campaign leaflet
· Work on Farmhouse – see list
· Orchard
· London flat
· Stop-it/kibble
Three days after the village hall briefing, the action group gathered together on Orchard Farm’s patio. The night sky provided a velvet backdrop for the stars, and for a few minutes Clare stood looking at them, trying to remember the constellations her parents used to point out to her on clear evenings. Clare hadn’t thought about stars for decades – she didn’t notice them in London as it was never dark enough. She wondered whether the stars were as clear from the Greek islands she was missing – she would make a point of looking upwards on the rest of her trip. Not wanting to chew expensive electricity, she switched on a string of fairy lights she’d found on special offer in the supermarket, adding a festive air she wasn’t sure matched the occasion.
First to arrive were Ivy and Fred. Ivy was a win, given her influence, but her presence was a mixed blessing. Ivy was Richard’s tenant, and Clare didn’t like the idea of Ivy publicly resisting his plan. Her ethical stance would also require careful handling. Fred too presented multiple challenges. He was also a Hastings’ tenant but in addition was a friend of Sam’s and might inadvertently leak their ideas to the opposition.
Fred arrived carrying a shopping bag and Ivy a cake. Clare led them outside, where Ivy cut slices of cake, explaining that several villagers including Gina and her partner were keen to be involved, but couldn’t join evening meetings. ‘They’ve all got young children,’ explained Ivy. Anna puffed in late, gave Clare a hug, whispering that Trish was going to help ‘but off stage,’ she said with a wink. ‘Sorry, but I can only manage an hour tonight.’
‘It’s not that long an agenda!’ said Clare.
‘Good,’ said Fred, fiddling with his ears. ‘Need to give the dahlias an evening drink of water.’ He flinched. ‘Wretched hearing aids have just given me a dollop of static.’
Clare sat with her back to the pockmarked lawn. Repairing the grass from Stop-it’s exploits was like dealing with an overactive mole – as soon as she filled in one set of holes, he dug another. The women sat on either side of Clare, with Fred and his shopping bag opposite them on a rattan sofa. Ivy picked up her agenda and frowned.
‘Before we start, can I raise something?’ said Ivy.
‘Me too,’ said Fred, forcefully.
Guessing she didn’t want to hear what Ivy wanted to say, Clare smiled at Fred.
‘You need to change the name – it can’t be BARF!’
‘Fine,’ said Clare, fishing around for alternatives.
‘He refers to it as a shed,’ said Anna, ‘so maybe make it BARS?’
‘You need to add an F before the S,’ said Fred.
‘What does the F stand for?’ asked Ivy.
‘It ends in –ing. I’ll let you fill in the three letters between the F and the –ing’ said Fred chortling.
Clare exchanged a look with Anna who was trying to hide a grin. ‘I understand the sentiment, Fred, but the acronym will appear on official documents. I think it’s best to be professional,’ she said, as she ticked off item number one on her agenda.
Ivy was wriggling. ‘I’m a bit concerned about setting up an action group without giving Richard a chance to explain his position.’ Not again! No one would laugh louder than Richard if he could hear Ivy dithering about the ethics of trying to stop him. Any minute now, Ivy would suggest they invite him to future BARS meetings just to be fair. ‘I don’t like going behind someone’s back,’ Ivy finished, wringing her hands.
‘Which brings us neatly back to the agenda,’ said Clare. ‘We’ll circle back to item two, but I agree with Ivy – I think someone should go and speak to Richard. Ask him to reconsider and suggest an alternative use for that field.’ She stopped. Fred had his little fingers in both earholes, a bemused expression on his face. ‘Everything okay, Fred?’ asked Clare.
His eyes wavered at her.
‘Hearing aids working?’ asked Clare a little louder.
‘Eh?’ said Fred, poking at his ears.
Clare raised her voice, ‘I was suggesting someone should try and convince Richard to change his plans from eggs, maybe—’
Fred sat back against the sofa, his eyes wide. ‘No need to shout.’
Clare took a breath. In ten minutes, all they’d achieved was a name. She lowered her voice. ‘He could plant soft fruit – strawberries, blueberries, raspberries. Maybe set up a pick-your-own section, which could be popular with the holidaymakers. They can be very profitable.’
‘Hard work though. Very labour-intensive,’ said Fred. ‘All that pruning and irrigation, and soft fruit is mostly hand-picked.’
Clare hadn’t realized that. As a teenager, the harvest just happened while she was at school. She hoped there was a machine that picked apples, and that her mother had one. Her eyes misted over. Until now, she hadn’t accepted the practical implications of spending months in Devon – she would be harvesting; she must become a farmer. She would have to slay her ghosts and get into the orchard. Mentally she added ‘ Check mower and locate machine to pick apples ’ to her farm task list, and then tuned back into the conversation.
‘There must be a machine that picks soft fruit,’ mused Fred.
‘Technology must have cracked that one,’ said Anna.
Clare ran her hands down her face. Her activists were veering off course like tourists following a sat nav down a blind alley.
Anna popped the last of her cake into her mouth and mumbled, ‘Maybe a robot ...’
Clare held up her hands. ‘It was just an idea. It’s his land. I don’t think we care what he does provided it doesn’t affect the village. Do we agree someone should go and see him?’
‘Yes,’ said three voices in unison.
‘Who?’ asked Clare.
Silence. There was a rustling sound. Clare glanced towards the noise. Stop-it had his nose wedged in Fred’s shopping bag, his tail wagging faster than a set of windscreen wipers in a storm. Anna piped up, ‘ You’re the best person. You’re the farmer with all the ideas.’
Clare wasn’t a farmer, and more importantly, she didn’t want to go. Of all of them, she would elicit the worst reaction – Richard had her earmarked as a troublemaker. ‘Not me. I’m the newbie.’
Anna shot Clare an apologetic look. ‘I haven’t got time, and I don’t think we can ask Ivy or Fred to be the spokesperson.’
Clare was listening to Anna with one eye on Fred’s shopping bag. There was a bit too much snuffling going on for her liking. She sighed. ‘All right, I’ll go. I must warn you though, I’m not convinced he’ll see me with an open mind, so I suggest we have a backup plan. Which brings us to our next agenda item. What is our objective? What does BARS want to achieve?’
‘Get him to reduce the scale,’ said Anna.
‘Or nudge it back up the road,’ suggested Fred.
‘And make sure he’s dealing with the waste properly,’ added Ivy.
Clare shook her head at them. ‘Too tame. Even if he halves the number of birds, it will still ruin Brambleton, and he’s not going to move it up the hill. That puts it closer to the Hall. We need to get it stopped.’
‘Compromise is always best,’ said Ivy.
‘You can’t compromise with a bully,’ said Clare. Stop-it’s nose emerged from Fred’s shopping bag. He had a new toy; Clare reached over to remove the banana from his mouth. It was covered in visible puncture holes. She tossed it and gave an apologetic look at the owner.
‘Do you think we can stop him?’ asked Ivy.
‘How?’ asked Fred, staring at his damaged banana.
‘By convincing the Council to refuse permission,’ said Clare.
‘We had a brilliant turnout at the village hall,’ said Anna. ‘We need to get everyone to formally object.’
‘How do they do that?’ asked Ivy.
‘They write to the Council asking them to reject his application for a specific reason.’
‘Because their houses will drop in value?’ said Fred sarcastically.
‘No,’ said Anna. ‘That’s not grounds for the Council to refuse permission. They can only reject this on planning grounds.’
‘What are they?’ asked Clare.
‘It’s a short list,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve spoken to someone who does this for a living and apparently the best grounds for refusing permission on this sort of thing are ...’ She paused, opened a notebook and started reading. ‘Noise,’ she glanced up and added, ‘both from the birds and from the increase in heavy goods vehicles. He’s going to need lots of those with 40,000 birds, getting feed in, eggs out. And then there’s the visual impact of the shed ...’
‘Don’t call it a shed,’ shouted Fred. ‘A shed’s what I store my garden tools in. That building’s the size of an airport terminal.’
‘Let’s call it what it is,’ said Clare. ‘A factory. This is an industrial process, it’s not farming. Sorry, Anna, you were saying.’
‘Visual impact,’ Anna continued. ‘And that’s the point – this will alter the look of the area, turn it from a rural landscape into an industrial one.’ She dipped her head again, then added, ‘Smell and impact on the watercourse.’ Anna looked up from her list.
‘Right, so that’s what we put in the leaflet,’ said Clare scribbling down the last words.
‘Has everyone read the EIA?’ asked Anna.
‘The what?’ said Fred.
‘Here,’ said Anna, passing out copies. ‘EIA stands for Environmental Impact Assessment. It’s a report by experts which examines the theoretical impact the chickens would have on the surrounding environment. Take a look.’
For the third time, Clare flicked through the document. It was full of jargon and legalese. She glanced up at Ivy’s furrowed brow and then at Fred, who was using a finger to trace a line under the words, a confused expression on his face. Two intelligent, well-educated people were struggling to understand the document. Was the Council any better at deciphering the weasel words of Richard’s expert?
Anna got up, her eyes glued to her watch. ‘Must dash.’
‘Hang on a tick,’ said Clare. ‘I thought we were going to start drafting a leaflet.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Anna, throwing Clare an apologetic look, ‘I must go. And anyway, I haven’t a clue what to put in the leaflet.’
‘Nor have I,’ said Fred, rising to his feet. ‘I must see to my dahlias – night-time feeding’s best.’
‘Not one for me,’ said Ivy. Anna was backing away, stuffing her notebook in her bag.
Clare sighed again. ‘I’ll have a crack at it and circulate something for comments.’ It was going to be a late night. She would find somewhere to curl up and pretend she was in London.
Once the others had left, Clare poured herself a glass of wine, flopped on the sofa and surfed the net, intending to approach the task like a new case. Initially, she jotted down all the negatives about Richard’s plan, smiling when she started a second page, then ranked them in descending order of nastiness. Top of the list, in contrast to the reassuring conclusions of the EIA, was the environmental impact. The waste would cause air and water pollution. Next on her nasty scale were health risks from ammonia fumes.
She added smell and poor animal welfare, which reminded her of Ivy’s stories about the state the Veras had arrived in. Clare refilled her wine glass, then downloaded photographs. She winced at the images of hens in cages, peering forlornly out of bars, thousands of skeletal birds cramped so close together they couldn’t move. Bright lights lit up the space all day and all night, mimicking sunlight to encourage laying. These exhausted looking hens had never seen daylight, roosted in a bush at dusk or wriggled in a dust bath on a warm summer’s day.
After a couple of hours, Clare had a first draft and a mounting sense of anger. She allowed her true feelings to spill out into the document – it was only a draft – all the pain, hurt and fury at what Hastings had done to her mother was translated into biting accusations of Richard’s evil intentions. It would never pass the legal test of verification, but it felt good to write. She drained her glass and for a laugh sent the draft to Anna:
Would love to circulate this version!
Then, wanting to be inclusive, she sent it to Ivy and Fred, too, promising to circulate the real version later that night.
She took a gulp of wine, imagining herself in her London office drafting a document. This leaflet was going to be circulated throughout the village, and before it was she needed to satisfy herself that everything it said was correct; that statements – especially those critical of Richard – were supported by hard evidence. A blog or news article wouldn’t be sufficient.
Clare switched to coffee and started backing-up her claims, reluctantly striking out some allegations, toning down the language and inserting phrases like ‘Some people experienced in the field of ...’ and ‘It’s possible that ...’. Then she attached her revised draft to her BARS email tag, asked for comments and hit the send button with a sense of triumph.
First strike!
In the morning, she would attack again – she was going to visit Richard.