Chapter 14
The break-in had shaken them all. Upended the peace and the calm, the happy rhythm of their days, and in their place left a turbulence riven with unease that someone could wilfully encroach on what was theirs and wreak such havoc.
To steal was one thing, but it was quite another to break, to destroy, to leave nothing behind, in full knowledge of what they were doing.
It took another day before anyone could bring themselves to go back to the old farmhouse. To put right anything that was left and salvage what they could. Even broken things had their uses, they knew that more than most, but there was broken and there was smashed to pieces…
So it was with a heavy heart that Gemma approached the hencoop that morning, the last of her tasks before facing the mess.
The book she had borrowed from the library lay unopened on the small table beside her bed, its secrets still uncovered.
Because what was the point? Whatever she discovered and however much it fired her enthusiasm to get back to the garden, she couldn’t create anything with her bare hands.
A hazy veil of mist still clung to the ground as she walked but the sun would soon chase it away, continuing its mild warming of the henpecked soil.
It would be a while before it was turned into the hot, dry dust of summer, but already the change in temperature had summoned life where seemingly there had been none.
The hedges were beginning to blossom, filling out in swathes of frothy white, and the stark lines of winter had been gently softened.
She collected the eggs and refreshed the water trough, mentally tallying the hens as she did so.
It was second nature to her now – watching as Myrtle dashed forward, always the first to investigate anything, while Jemima was always the last. Knowing that when she was done in the coop she would go to the spot under the hedge by the apple trees where Eloise insisted on laying her eggs.
Standing for a moment, she closed her eyes, her face upturned towards the sky.
It was still a little chilly, the spring was late in coming this year, but at some point over the last few weeks Gemma had become acclimatised to the cold.
She no longer sought to hide from it, wanting to burrow herself away inside, but instead knew that the more she moved, the warmer she would become.
And there was always the promise of returning to the house, with fingers tingling and cheeks glowing, feeling the bloom of heat and the comfort of a hot drink.
It made her body feel alive in a way she couldn’t remember feeling before.
But this morning, there was a new memory to revisit.
That of her first day at the farm, when she had come to collect the eggs and all she had seen was mud, and dirt, ugliness and disorder.
All she had felt was what was missing from her life, not what she had gained.
She breathed slowly, taking the air deep inside her lungs as she realised that what was missing was the clamour of her life before, the constant weight of unanswered emails, of a to-do list which never seemed to end, and the feeling of helplessness at never being in the right place – pulled between her work and the care of her mum, the guilt, the frustration, and the anger…
But there was also the knowledge that she had always, always managed to keep the plates spinning well enough so that none of them crashed to the ground.
She had solved problems, weathered setback after setback, and adapted to the challenges they brought.
She had done it time and time again, and she could do so now.
Just like the iron earth, resilient in the knowledge that it would warm and soften and bring forth life.
And this time she would face her new challenges with the comfort of companionship, something which made anything she was facing so much easier by being shared…
It was a good feeling to build upon. It could be a good day if she chose to make it so… She said goodbye to each of the hens in turn and headed back to the house. Yes, there was a garden waiting to be discovered, but there was a job to be done first.
It wasn’t just the absence of tools which would cause them problems, but all the other bits of equipment that had been damaged or spoiled in some way.
There were carefully hoarded seeds, whose packets had been ripped open.
Bags of manure and compost whose sacks had been split; even bamboo canes and stakes had been snapped into several pieces – all of it had been useful, and all of it would need to be replaced at some point.
A systematic approach was what was called for and, after Ashley and Leo had both arrived, Rowan divided them into two groups – he and Leo would look at the rooms which held their so-called ‘junk’ – the lengths of wood, the rolls of wire, old furniture, all the things which they had saved in order to be repurposed in some way.
The women – Gemma, Willow and Ashley – would work their way through the rooms which had held tools and other equipment.
There were three piles to be made. One for things which were okay, one for things that could be salvaged, and one for anything which was beyond repair.
Gemma had to hope that two of these piles were considerably bigger than the third.
It was a time to reset and reassess before moving forward and, as Willow pointed out, it was part of a cycle – a cycle which was well-known to anyone with an interest in being self-sufficient.
She had also made a batch of flapjacks, sticky with syrup and rich with dates and chocolate chips, so that by late morning the atmosphere was, if not exactly light-hearted, then buoyed up by chatter and a common purpose.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the rooms which Rowan and Leo were sorting through had fared a little better.
If something was already viewed as junk then perhaps it wasn’t possible to make it even more useless, so the things stored there were in disarray, but largely still intact, or damaged in a way that didn’t alter how Rowan had planned to use them.
The rooms the women were clearing, however, had borne the brunt of the damage.
A good number of the tools had been stolen outright.
Irritating things such as the small hand tools which Willow used all the time – trowels, forks, secateurs and the like.
But also missing were the bigger items without which progress with the old garden would be next to impossible.
They’d been relying on the shears and loppers to deal with the thick brambles, and without spades and long-handled forks, any digging they did manage to do would be a miracle.
They began to make a list of what had gone, nodding with satisfaction each time they could annotate it to show what Rowan and Leo had managed to replace.
Gemma bent down to pick up a pile of broken pottery shards, what was left of the large number of pots which Willow had collected over time.
They had all been stacked on shelves, the lengths of which were also on the ground and, as Gemma lifted them, her eye was drawn to a number of screws on the floor beneath them.
She held them in the palm of her hand for a moment, thinking.
Then, straightening, she studied the walls themselves before slipping the screws into her pocket.
No one gave any thought to how mad it might seem to use a spoon from the kitchen to scoop up fallen seeds, or refill a new bag with spilled compost using an old mug.
It was the difference between what most people would throw away and what could be reclaimed.
And it was surprising what the combination of time and a fierce determination could do.
By four o’clock, however, they were beginning to flag.
The bulk of the work had been done, bigger things tackled first, and now they were down to the detail.
The nitty-gritty last bits of tidying which, as tiredness claimed them, it became harder to find the enthusiasm for.
But they had done well. It was a place to start from anew.
Leo was the last to finish, meeting them in the old kitchen, standing a broom in one corner which he had used to sweep up the remaining broken pieces of pot. He looked exhausted, tired and dusty, yet his stance was still resolute and a fire burned in the depths of his eyes.
‘Right,’ he said, addressing the room in general, although facing Rowan. ‘I don’t want any arguments because my mind is made up but, from tonight, Mulligan and I will be sleeping here. If anyone thinks it’s a good idea to come on-site again without a welcome, then they can think again.’
Willow’s mouth dropped open. ‘But where will you sleep?’
‘On the floor. I have an old inflatable mattress, and Mulligan has his bed, so… Although if past experience is anything to go by, he’ll decide to share the mattress. And by that I mean totally hog it, of course.’
‘But you’ll freeze.’
‘There’s a fireplace in the third room and we’ve plenty of wood.’
‘There are also single-glazed windows which are cracked in places and virtually falling out of the frames in others,’ she added, giving him a stern look.
Leo smiled. ‘Willow, it might surprise you to learn that I’ve slept in far worse over the years. What do you think I did when I was first setting up my business and had nowhere to live until I built it?’
A hot flush of shame washed over Gemma. She hadn’t known that. Or rather, she’d chosen not to think about it. But where else would he have gone? What else would he have done?