Up until a few years ago Nell had helped with the accounts, but she had made it plain to Charlie that it was about time he got someone else, and that does not mean Gabby, she had said firmly. Charlie did not blame Nell, it took hours of her time and there was always a last-minute panic. All the same, with Josh gone Gabby had more time on her hands, and if Nell had managed to restore as well as balance the books, he could not see why it would be such a big deal for Gabby to take over Nell’s work.
However, he had begun to rely on Gabby’s small financial input, which made a difference, so he grudgingly hired Alan. It had been an excellent move. Alan had managed to slice a sizable chunk from their feed bills and he was way ahead of Charlie and Nell when it came to what they could and could not put against tax. Charlie had to admit the man earnt every penny he paid him. Alan came from a farming family himself and he had plenty of sound ideas on farm management. Today, however, his face was serious.
‘Look at this, Charlie.’ He picked a bulb from a bag on his desk and held it in the palm of one hand. He gently scratched the surface with a fingernail and the bulb crumbled.
‘Shit.’ Charlie picked the bulb up and peered at it. ‘Eel worm. Which field?’
‘The two-acre field at Mendely.’
‘We stored the bulbs from that field on their own, didn’t we?’
‘Yes, b––’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Charlie … listen! We stored the bulbs from that field on their own, but, if you remember, the red barn had a hole in the roof, so while it was being fixed we also put the bulbs from the small home field in there.’
‘Oh, shit!’ Charlie said again angrily. ‘We’ve lost two bloody fields, then, and that barn will be useless until we’ve disinfected it.’
‘It could have been worse, Charlie.’ Alan pointed outside his office where layers of bulbs filled the barn. ‘Matt and I have checked the bulbs in the other barns and as far as we can see everything is fine. If we had to get eel worm, much better it was one of the smaller fields away from the farm.’
‘We’ll have to buy in, then, as soon as possible,’ Charlie said. ‘Have you got time to go through the catalogues for main breeders this afternoon?’
‘Yes. About three o’clock, before milking? I’ve got the meal rep coming at two-thirty.’
Charlie turned for the door. ‘Let’s make it three-thirty. It will give me and Matt time to plough up the field at Mendely. See you then. I’ve got my mobile if anything else crops up.’
Charlie came out of the barn in a bad temper and collared Nell who was feeding the bantams.
‘Have you seen Matt, Nell?’
‘He’s taken the repaired tractor to the far field, he asked me to tell you.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, why couldn’t he just wait until he’d seen me this morning?’
‘Charlie, he didn’t know where you were. What’s put you in a foul mood all of a sudden?’
‘Eel worm. All the bulbs from Mendely are contaminated, plus we stored the bulbs from the small home field with them, so two whole fields will have to be chucked.’
Nell sighed. ‘That is bad luck. Did you get that hole mended in the red barn?’
‘No!’ Charlie snapped. ‘I haven’t quite got round to that. I can’t be bloody everywhere. Look, Nell, can you get Gabby to go and find Matt and tell him to leave what he’s doing and meet me at Mendely. I want him to plough up the field so I can spray it immediately. Even if he’s got his mobile phone he won’t hear it.’
Nell sighed and scattered corn in an arc. ‘Gabby isn’t here, she left shortly after you this morning. You can’t have forgotten, surely? She’s gone to Scilly to look at figureheads. I’m sorry, Charlie, but I can’t go either. I’ve got a client collecting a picture in ten minutes.’
‘Fine, fine. I’ll go myself. Obviously I’m a one-man band around here. Why Gabby has to go swanning off on a weekday is beyond me.’
‘Charlie,’ Nell said quietly, ‘come on, eel worm is serious, but you’ve caught it early. If it was one of the large fields it would have been far worse. It’s happened before and it will happen again. We’ve been farming long enough for you to know disease is an occupational hazard, with bulbs or livestock.’
She smiled at him. ‘Don’t do a Ted on me. You know how it used to drive you mad.’
Reluctantly, Charlie grinned back at her.
‘Come on, I’ll make you a coffee before you go out.’
Charlie followed her into the farmhouse, sobered by the thought of turning into his father. Ted, at the slightest setback, would lugubriously pronounce instant bankruptcy. Indeed, he constantly predicted doom lay in wait for all farmers, but it crouched in particular waiting for him.
‘Do I really sound like Dad?’ he asked Nell, leaning against the Aga and pulling a hand through his hair irritably.
‘Sometimes you do.’ Nell took the heavy kettle off the Aga and poured water into two mugs. ‘Your language is worse, you get angry rather than depressed, and your bad temper blows over more quickly than your father’s black moods.’
Charlie took his mug of coffee from her and asked suddenly, surprising himself as well as Nell, ‘Were you happy with Dad, Nell?’
Startled, for this was so unlike Charlie, Nell was momentarily lost for the right words. Eventually she said slowly, ‘I don’t think I had the time to even think about it. We had a busy life together and I believe I was perfectly content. We both loved the farm and had the same goals …’
Nell added, because she knew it was what Charlie wanted to hear, ‘Your father and I understood each other very well. We had a whole life together.’
Charlie grinned and drained his mug. ‘Good. I’m off. I won’t be back for lunch, I’ll grab a pasty as I go through the village. See you later. When is Gabby back?’
‘Not till this evening.’
‘Why does she need all day to look at figureheads?’
‘Peter Fletcher couldn’t go, and he asked Gabby if she wouldn’t mind going with Mark Hannah, the Canadian, to see the figureheads and to show him around Tresco. It would be a waste of money to just go out there and come back on the next helicopter, don’t you think? She did tell you, Charlie, you don’t listen.’
‘Probably not,’ he said proudly and went out of the door.
Nell, irritated, thought, he sounds just like his father sometimes, too. It was a glorious morning and she hoped Gabby was enjoying every minute of a day’s escape.
It was odd. Gabby was such a small, unobtrusive person. Often they would not see each other all day, yet when she was away from the farm Nell felt the lack of her presence in her small workroom, missed glimpses of her flitting around the farm, somehow always registered the weight of her absence.
She thought about her duplicity in answering Charlie’s question. Of course she had had time to think about her happiness with Ted. Too much time. Working with your hands freed your mind to fly to places better not visited, but that did not mean she had wasted her life in wanting to change what she could not. The one thing she did envy about Ted back then, and Charlie now, was their ability to accept as truth anything she said with quiet conviction. It was something she had perfected over the years, for in the moment of saying it she too believed the power of her own unambiguity.
She picked up a bowl and went back outside to check the chicken houses and surrounding area for eggs. She found six perfect