Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
She relayed the whole infuriating encounter to Matt when he got home.
‘It was like he expected me to tug my forelock and say we’d be out by the end of the week. I can’t believe they’ve got the whole place in their pockets like this.’
‘Maddening,’ Matt agreed. But he seemed distracted.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
‘Oh . . .’ He rubbed his face wearily. ‘The French are being more demanding than I expected. They’re happy to ignore the terms of the deal when it suits them, but if our profits slip by even one quarter . . .’ He shrugged.
She felt a pang of anxiety. ‘But it’s all OK, yes? There’s nothing which could affect the loan?’
‘No, of course not,’ he said quickly. ‘Everything’s fine. And we’ve got a couple of big pitches coming up that should see us sorted.’ He gave her a tired smile.
But those last two statements, she realised, were actually contradictory. Things must be worse than he was letting on.
She felt bad he couldn’t talk to her properly, when he was so clearly worried. But this had always been the pattern of their relationship: he didn’t tell her things that might worry her, even though one of her worries was that he wasn’t telling her things.
She squeezed his arm. ‘Love you. And we will get through this. We’ll sort it all out.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Love you, too. And, yes, we will.’
The next day, she was reading Rosemary’s notes, a cup of coffee in her hand, when the silence was shattered by a bang.
No – not just a bang, she thought as she dabbed at the coffee she’d spilt. An explosion. It had been loud enough to send birds flying from the woods.
A few minutes later, there was another one, followed by another clattering of birds. She tensed, waiting for it to happen again. But it didn’t, and she slowly relaxed.
After twenty minutes, there was another, equally deafening bang from the same direction.
Bugger this, she thought. I’m not going to just sit here while things get blown up around me.
Pulling on some wellies, she set off down to the woods. At the treeline, she hesitated, wondering which way to go, but then yet another bang buffeted the air. It came from her left, deeper into the trees, so she headed that way.
When she reached the track to Gordon’s farm, she saw there were two propane gas canisters next to it. Each was attached to a metal tube resembling a small cannon, pointing in the direction of Trade Cottage.
They were gas-powered bird scarers, she realised, though they must be extra-powerful ones: the bangs had been louder than any she’d heard before. Well, two could play at this game.
Going up to the canisters, she turned the valves clockwise until they were fully off.
For a few hours, there was peace. But that afternoon, the bangs started up again.
She googled ‘gas gun regulations’. To her amazement, there didn’t seem to be any.
Or rather, there were ‘Responsible Use Guidelines’, but no actual rules about what farmers could do with them, or how often they could be set to go off.
It seemed crazy that, in the countryside, you could deafen your neighbours or hand a child a shotgun without anyone giving a damn, but if you wanted to open an Airbnb or retile a bathroom, you had to jump through endless bureaucratic hoops.
She dialled the council’s switchboard and got transferred from person to person, each time being put on hold. Eventually, she was put through to someone who wanted to know if the canisters were on a footpath.
She admitted they weren’t.
‘Well, your best bet is to speak to the farmer, to see why he’s placed them where he has. Perhaps he’ll agree to resite them.’
She knew it was going to be futile, but her blood was up from the frustration of being on the phone for so long, as well as from the bangs that had punctuated the on-hold music half a dozen times.
Getting into the car, she drove down the muddy track that led to Park Farm, passing the gas guns on the way.
Gordon must have put them there so he could check them as he drove past, she realised, and turn them back on if she’d turned them off.
She’d never been to the farmyard before. It was surprisingly large – the farmhouse was bigger even than Trade Cottage, surrounded by big, modern barns. For a moment she hesitated, not knowing which way to go. Then she saw Gordon, climbing down from a tractor.
‘Hi, there,’ she said as she walked over, deliberately making her voice as unconfrontational as possible.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said blankly.
‘I’ve come about those gas guns. I was just wondering why they’re where they are. According to the internet, it’s not usual to have them going at this time of year. Quite apart from anything else, they must be scaring off the pheasants.’
‘Must they?’ he said. ‘Interesting.’
She waited for him to continue – an uncomfortably long time.
‘The pheasants are eating my winter barley,’ he said at last. ‘What time of year does the internet think I should be sowing that? Clue’s in the name, I’d say, but maybe Facebook knows better.’
‘Look,’ she said desperately, ‘you came to our party. You said yourself, it was great we were getting on so well with Paul and Rosemary, when you’d thought they’d find it impossible to leave. You know how much of an effort we’ve made.’
Gordon shrugged. ‘I don’t know the ins and outs, and I don’t really care.
But Rosemary wants the house back, and you’re being as stubborn as an old ewe that doesn’t want to go up the loading ramp.
It’s nothing personal, but we’ll have you out in the end, so you might as well go sooner rather than later. ’
She could feel herself flushing with anger. She wanted to hit him, and to hell with the consequences, but she managed to restrain herself.
‘You won’t,’ she heard herself say. ‘You really won’t. We’re not leaving, so you might as well stop these stupid games.’
She turned on her heel and went back to her car, getting in quickly so he wouldn’t see she was trying not to cry. As she drove out of the farmyard, he was still there, standing by his tractor, watching her go.