Something Only We Know (38 page)

I opened a page at random. ‘Comfrey’, read the chapter heading. ‘A Friend to Bees and Man.’

My phone bleeped with a text, and at the same time I was aware of Gerry and Alan clumping up the wooden stairs. When I opened my mobile, it showed a message from Owen:
Saleem wants to know
if we’re still up for trip to Wales on Saturday.

I was. Keisha and Vikki had been hassling us to go out and see some friends of theirs on Lake Bala, and have a barbecue and some home-brewed wine and generally chill. Saleem was bringing a new
girlfriend with him who we were gagging to see. Even the weather forecast looked hopeful. I was about to simply reply and confirm, when I had an idea.

Are you free right now? Have you still got keys to Saleem’s van?
I texted.

Yes and yes,
came the answer a moment later.

I’ll be with you in 10. Dig out your camera.

‘Bloody hell, that was a job and a half, I tell you,’ said Gerry, plonking himself down on his swivel chair next to me and wiping his brow with his shirt cuff. ‘Still,
we’re stocked up with paper till about 2020. Have I missed anything?’

‘Oh, only the start of the end of my career, probably. Listen, I’m ducking out for a bit. There’s something important I have to do, and I won’t be back before lunchtime.
If Rosa asks where I am, tell her – tell her I’ve gone to cover an escaped giraffe on the A525.’

He let out a snort. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK. Will do. I’m sure you know what you’re about and you’re not headed full-on into any kind of shit-storm. ’Cause that wouldn’t be like you at all, would
it?’

I grinned, unhooked my bag from my chair, jumped to my feet and gave him the thumbs-up.

Owen parked the van round the corner, out of sight of the Williams’ cottage, so no questions would be asked as to why
The Messenger
had sent their staff out in a
vehicle marked ‘Spice Delight’.

‘Remember, as far as this woman’s concerned, you’re
The Messenger’s
official photographer,’ I told him. ‘That means no passing comment on the story,
no engaging in debate. However strongly you feel. Basically, you need to take a ton of snaps and keep schtum.’

He nodded and mimed a zipping action across his mouth

It was Mr Williams who let us in through the newly patched-up gate. A wiry man of about fifty, wearing farmers’ overalls and thick work boots, he walked with his shoulders hunched in a
kind of glum resignation.

‘I’ll show you the coop first,’ he said. ‘Not that we’ve many girls left in it.’

There wasn’t anything remarkable about the smallholding, other than perhaps its proximity to the broad, slow-moving river. We’d arrived on a day of bright sunshine and the water
glinted as it flowed between the grassy banks. The cottage itself was a pretty but modest two-bedroomed affair, in need of some renovation. The Williams also owned some outbuildings, and a paddock
which they rented to a neighbouring farmer, and another field which they used themselves as an allotment. It was clear from the first, though, that the hens had been the big deal.

‘We had some Silkies and Sussex and Faverolles, Orpingtons and a couple of ex-battery. My wife’s pride and joy, they were. They had the run of the place and they loved it. Scratting
about. Now we’ve just a handful left. About three-quarters of our stock gone, bff, just like that. Bodies piled up near the bend. Sal was very upset.’

The scene looked peaceful enough now. Leaving Owen on the river bank to take his photos, we went inside to sit in the low-ceilinged kitchen. And as Mr Williams spooned cheap coffee out of a
catering pack, it struck me how different this room was from the glossy ‘farmhouse-style kitchens’ featured in Messenger Lifestyle. For a start, the quarry-tiled floor was scattered
with seeds and chunks of mud. There was a tin of mite treatment on the drainer, a bucket of poultry grit on the doormat, a bottle of Verm-X by the soap dispenser. The table top was heaped with old
newspapers and flyers. A battered gun cabinet took up the far corner, while the cupboard by the door looked as if it fastened with blue baler twine. Everything was scruffy, down-at-heel. None of
your gingham ties, your Crabtree & Evelyn here.

First I had Mr Williams go through the events of the day again. Then I started to try and flesh the story out.

‘Obviously you’re angry with the hunt,’ I said, ‘but given you’re a chicken farmer, isn’t it a good thing to get rid of a few foxes?’

He shook his head. ‘If you build a good, strong, hardwood coop and you lock it properly at night, foxes shouldn’t be a problem. Our coop had an automatic timer controlling the doors
– oh, aye, no expense spared for those girls. And you can see the fence round it. That’s a six-foot heavy gauge mesh, buried a foot deep. Even a badger couldn’t push through that.
People use daft stuff like chicken wire and then they’re surprised when a fox bites a hole in it. Chicken wire keeps chickens in but it dunt keep foxes out. Oh, and then we have an electric
wire running about fox-nose height round the edge. That gives them a surprise; they don’t come back after a zap from that.’

‘I see. So you’re telling me you’ve never had a fox take one of your fowl?’

‘Nope. Safe as houses, our hens were. Well, I say that. Mink, you have to watch out for, and we lost some to a rat one time – accidentally shut it in with the chickens one night.
That was nasty. So nowadays I always check. But you know, even if a fox was causing me trouble, I’d just get my gun and shoot it, easy and clean. The technology’s so good it’s a
piece of cake to shoot something these days, long as you’re using the proper calibre with a decent scope. A Bushnell, I use. And the point is, shooting would take out the actual fox that was
causing bother. The trouble with hounds is, they flush out any old fox they come across, might not be the right one. There’s no control. No control at all. As we found out.’ He laughed
bitterly.

Through the small cottage window I could see Owen crouching with his camera to get a low-angled shot of the coop. He was taking his role very seriously.

‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of these bunny-hugger types,’ he went on. ‘Pests are pests, sometimes they want sorting. But there are ways. Most foxes
that need taking out get shot because it’s quick and straightforward and it only involves one person and it doesn’t damage anyone else’s property. No need to assemble great crowds
or special outfits or packs of animals to do it. You pull that trigger and the fox knows nothing about it. Just, bang bang, gone. You can bag several in a night if you have to. But the hounds, they
kill, what,
tiny
numbers. Nothing that makes any sort of impact on the population. And that makes me laugh. Because what would you think if you had a nest of a hundred wasps and you called
out a pest controller and he said to you, “Great, I’ve got this method where we’ll just kill three or four of them and leave the rest unharmed.” You’d think he was
mad, wouldn’t you? Same as, if you’ve got a fly in your bathroom, you just swat it with a paper. Job done. You don’t get someone round to loose a pack of trained lizards onto your
upstairs landing.’

I smiled at the image. ‘When you put it like that.’

‘I’m not anti-blood sports, Miss Crossley. I’m anti-palaver. I’m anti-bullshit. If anyone tells you hunting with dogs is necessary to keep fox numbers down, you know
they’re talking crap. It’s just an excuse to thump about over other people’s land and show who’s boss.’

‘OK. Interesting, though, because a lot of readers will assume that people who live in the country support the hunt automatically. That it’s an urban–rural divide.’

‘Don’t know about that. Maybe once upon a time. Not now. You won’t find much support for it round here, and most of us have lived in this hamlet our whole lives. In any case,
the Glasington’s made up of city folk – bankers, estate agents, solicitors, corporate types. I think there’s one or two you could just about call farmers, but they’re really
businessmen running food plants. Industrial-scale milking sheds, that kind of caper. They show up here in their great shiny vehicles, blocking the lanes and giving you filthy looks if you need to
get past. We’ve tolerated them because we feel we’ve no choice. But then there’s the broken fences and the mud trampled over your yard, your livestock upset – or worse. Oh,
I’ve some tales I could tell you. But, see, you dare to make a complaint and then you’re watching your back forever after . . .’

‘How do you mean?’

‘“Unfortunate things” happen. Never anything you can definitely pin on anyone, mind.’ He was running his dirty nail up and down the Formica surface of the table, picking
at the chips and cracks. ‘Stuff like, your car tyres let down, silent phone calls, dog shit through your letter box. Oh yeah. Messages. And the people who send them have friends in high
places. Rory Henscher up the road, he went for his usual summer job on the Langthorne estate clearing out rhodies, and he just got turned away; that was after he complained the hunt had smashed his
gatepost with one of their 4x4s. And he’d been relying on that job. The loss of wages near-crippled him.’

‘Did they tell him to his face? Did they say it was because he’d crossed the hunt?’

‘Nothing so obvious. He knew, though. They stick together, hunt-folk. Thumb your nose at one and they all rear up. Chief auctioneer at Hardock’s cattle market is a hunt member, and
if you go against him or his mates then you find you can’t sell your livestock, or it goes for next-to-nothing. Oh, we’ve had torch beams shone through our bedroom curtains at night. A
dead cat left on someone’s porch. And you get the impression that’s only the thin end of the wedge. You’ve no idea what’s coming next. They’re not all thugs who go
hunting, but some are. A few of these terrier-men are a law unto themselves. They have their own rules. Even the masters can’t dictate what they get up to.’

‘So are you worried about what might happen?’

Mr Williams pushed back his chair, which scraped with an evil noise across the tiles.

‘I am, yes. The problem is, we’re pretty remote out here. At night it’s pitch dark. Your nearest police are a good forty minutes away, and that’s if they come straight
out, which they don’t. But I’ve been taking precautions. I’ve nailed up our letter box. Postie leaves our letters in a tin by the gate these days. We’re having a lurcher pup
off Matty Higgins up the road, so that’ll make Sal happier if I have to go out of an evening. And I’ve installed security lights. You remember the cheque the Glasington gave us? Well, I
sellotaped it together and used it to buy a few useful bits and pieces. I thought it was, you know, appropriate.’

‘It’s going to cause trouble for you, then, if I print this.’ I knew as a journalist that was the last point I should be making to him, but I didn’t want to be
responsible for harm coming his way.

He met my eyes with a defiant look.

‘You know, I grew up on a farm, Miss Crossley. My father’s farm, passed on to him by my granddad. It was going to be mine. Then, in the 1970s, we had to sell up and developers came
and built a housing estate on top of it. Broke my dad’s heart. So after that I worked hard and saved my money and had a bit of luck – Sal’s luck, really – and eventually I
was able to buy this little patch of land, and although it’s not on the scale of my dad’s, it’s mine. When I close the gate, I close it against the world. Some people might say,
“Oh, it’s only chickens, why are you bothering, you can soon get some more,” but that’s not the point. They were Sal’s chickens, and she was heartbroken, and why
should I stand by and watch bully-boys upset my wife? This isn’t feudal times any more, we’re not peasants beholden to a lord of the manor. This is my land and my property. I may yet go
to the police – some of us round here want to but others aren’t so convinced, because the hunt have these hot-shot lawyers and they can throw whatever money they want at the courts. But
in the meantime I just want as many people to know as possible. Can you do that for me?’

‘As long as you’re sure.’

‘I am.’ He bent forward, placed his palms on the table and pushed himself to his feet. ‘Now, let me get those photos I took last week, just after the Glasington had buggered
off.’

By the time Owen and I climbed into the van, I was buzzing. Not only had Mr Williams given us an SD card of pictures – images of dead hens, feather-strewn grass, damage
and mayhem – he’d passed on a list of contact details for other villagers who he maintained wanted to speak to me. What we had here was a damn good story, if I could get my sources
straight first. Rosa would have to let it through. I’d go back this afternoon and give her the outline with a schedule for follow-ups, and she’d be gagging for me to get onto it. There
were all sorts of leads to investigate, injustices to be aired. I would go among these people and give a voice to the oppressed. And through everything ran the sense that this one story could be
the making of me, my scoop of the year, way above some stupid talent show, and never mind the usual brain-withering trivia I was asked to write.

‘Happy with that?’ said Owen, clipping his seat belt into place and firing up the engine.

I turned to him gratefully. ‘I’ll say. That was brilliant. Not brilliant for Mr Williams, obviously, but from a journalism perspective, a cracking interview. I got loads of stuff off
him. And I have to say, you were great.’

‘I only did what you told me.’

That’s the point
, I thought. I’d been worried he’d try to muscle in with his own thoughts on hunting or hierarchy. ‘But I didn’t half put you on the spot,
phoning up this morning and just demanding you taxi me out here and then play photographer.’

‘Yeah, well. It was important.’

He took his hand away from the wheel a moment to comb his fingers through his hair, and I thought I’d never seen him look so handsome. That sharp, stubbled jaw line, the fine nose, the
beautiful, even teeth. Owen, my boyfriend. I was a lucky girl. I ought to be grateful.

The lanes round here were narrow and thick-hedged, so we had to go steadily. Twice we met tractors and had to reverse to a passing space, and on one stretch we came across a lone sheep which had
got loose and ran about giddily till it blundered through a gap in the fencing. I enjoyed sitting high up in the van’s cab. I could see into fields, glimpse strutting pheasants and lolloping
rabbits and shimmering meres. On one gatepost we approached, a huge brown hawk-thing took off in front of us and flapped lazily over the valley. Summer was promised, you could see it in the land,
and it made me think of other summers while I was growing up. The cherry tree in our front garden was in full flower now, and I remembered gathering bunches of the fat pink blossoms, and having a
petal fight with Ned all over the drive. I remembered the three of us on a walk somewhere – had he taken us to a village carnival? – and as we were making our way along the public
footpath he’d fallen behind Hel and me on the path, then taken a stalk of long grass and tickled us on the necks and claimed it was bees. Later we’d swapped round so we were walking
behind and thrown burrs at his polo shirt.