Short Story: Country Living

Short Story: Country Living

“Bloody family commitments,” she growled, throwing an extra jumper into the bag, holding her warmest underwear and wooliest of tights. “What made you think I would want to spend a week with your monosyllabic cousin and his misanthropic father in that gloomy cave?”

“Think of the clean air, the views, the peace...and Aunt Fanny's cooking,” he said.

“Bah! They have clean air, views and peace in Antigua.”

“Well, we're going. Michael needs some help to finish the house, we need a break and....I think I can promise you some spectacular nights.”

“Ho Ho, big boy, not on that creaking bed.”

“What I meant was,” he struggled, “there’s a good chance that we will see an aurora because this is a maximum sunspot year.”

And so they bickered. Finally falling into a silent truce as they left the motorway and teased their way into the hills; the roads narrowing to lanes, the green strip below and the grey strip above, all framed by dripping trees. As always, he overshot the half hidden drive and had to back up to the left turn. Bottom gear, he steered the low slung roadster around the potholes. Three hundred yards of torture, cutting around and down over the contours of the south facing hill, through another gate, through the orchard. A shower of apples falling as a pig scratched itself against a tree. One more gate, blessed concrete and a flap of geese and chickens. House and garden to the right, a steep roofed old barn straight ahead, cowshed and stores on the third side of the yard. Tucked in under the hill, where the once rick yard had been, a new building stood. On their last visit this had been an experimental structure of straw bales but over the last eighteen months it had been roofed and rendered, windows glinting in deep recesses.

“Wow,” he said, “there doesn't seem much left for me to do.”

Beside the old house, Uncle Joe was working along the rows of vegetables, flat cap on his head and, “Oh no,” she hissed, “there's dewdrop on his nose,” an old collie raised an eye as its young companion bounded out of the garden and yapped at the car. Joe just carried on hoeing. A deep voice snapped from the depths of the cowshed, “Friends!”

The dog stopped and waited impatiently for the visitors to emerge. Aunt Fanny, wrapped in her perpetual pinnie, hands dusty with flour, bustled out of the house,

“Sorry, sorry. Michael is milking the cow, Mary is finishing of the children's lessons and I am all behind. Welcome to Stella Gibbons country!”

He kissed his aunt, carried the bags up to their room and was soon out into the yard looking for Michael. Aunt Fanny fussed around, compliments for hair, outfit, figure.

“So slim…”

‘Damn her,’ she shivered in the chill bedroom, ‘she won't make me feel at home in a year let alone a week,’ she thought as she finished unpacking, putting her thickest nightgown next to his thinnest pyjamas on the old bed. ‘And what was that look meant to convey when she inspected me?’

That evening, gathered around the table, all together for the first time, the children big eyed and silent, Joe still capped with carving knife and joint of beef in front of him, Michael and Mary anxious to please, offering drinks and Fanny unloading dishes of vegetables from the Rayburn.

“And your favourite suet pudden,” she said to him. Suet was rarely off the menu here. ‘Hell! Cold, cholesterol, TB and brucellosis. I'll never see civilisation again,’ she thought to herself.

The usual family talk continued over the meal Who had died, who was ill, who was pregnant. There was that look again from Fanny. Much to her relief the men slowly moved the talk towards developments around the little farm. The food and the Rayburn did their job, as she warmed gradually feeling dozy.

Eventually as sleep set in she excused herself. The chill of the hall was worse than cock crow in the early hours of dawn. She ran up the stairs, quickly slipped the nightie over her head before undressing and dragged the blankets and eiderdown right over her head. ‘I'll never let him do this to me again,’ she silently promised to herself. He followed later, a hint of smoke and a hint of whisky in the air. The warmth of a man beat the heat of an argument and so she drew him towards her.

It was mid morning before she appeared in the kitchen, wrapped in the oversize dressing gown she found behind the door. Mary, smiling, put a bowl of fresh, diced fruit before her and indicated a jug of cream. The children were there, washing up a pile of greasy breakfast things.

“n'oubliez pas la poêle à frire.”

“Oui, Maman,” they chorused.

“Home education is an all day thing with us. We do have formal sessions but you can make the chores of the day m much more fun by injecting a little education along the way.” Mary explained.

The sounds of hammering across the yard told her that Cousin Michael and her man were busy renewing old bonds. She supposed she might take an interest later. Last night, after the children had slipped off to bed and the evening was drawing to a close, Joe suddenly found his tongue. Or Mr. Bells had perhaps. He had moaned at Michael for wanting some new gadget and reminded them all that the aim was to be self sufficient. Inwardly she had groaned but the old boy had become quite animated and, she hated to admit it, interesting. He'd been an engineer when he decided to, “leave the lemmings behind.” He'd chosen this farm not because it was cheap and run down but for its fresh water spring, southern aspect and, its isolation.

“I never thought it would take as long as it has but the new house is nearly ready and it will run itself. Warm in the winter, cool in the summer. Service water from the roof stored in two large tanks buried beneath will also provide backup heating should it ever be needed and solar collectors made from scavenged radiators on the roof for hot water. Every self sufficiency trick in the book. And all the time the old engineer's maxim in mind. Keep It Simple.”

“In a day or so we'll have enough power to run the milker, the freezer and the lights. By the end of the winter we’ll even have enough even for a welder,” chipped in Michael.

“How come?” he said looking quizzically, as Old Joe helped himself to another Bells.

“That's the other reason I need your help. We'll finish the house in two days then I want you to sort out the wiring for the control box to my generator.”

‘Electricity,’ she thought, ‘how 21st century.’

“I found an old turbine in bits, it's taken a couple of years to rebuild...which is just as well because Dad has made a job of damming the stream for the reservoir,” explained Michael.

“Nowhere as long as it would have taken asking for planning permission and getting the bureaucrats in. Not to mention the collateral damage once they started looking round at our other projects,” the old man chortled.

Lunch appeared to be assuming the proportions of last night's feast. ‘A week of this and I won't be allowed back into my Pilates group,’ she thought to herself. Michael and her man came in, all sawdust and smiles.

“Would you mind fetching the kids to the table?” asked Michael.

She smiled and acquiesced, donning pink Wellingtons. What a day, blue sky, late summer warmth. The damp chill of yesterday soon forgotten. There was no sign of them in the yard or barn.

“Jack and Jill,” she called restraining the urge to sing ‘went up the hill’.

“We're here,” came a voice from the upper window of the straw house. She pushed at the honey oak of the front door. The walls were four feet thick. A glass panel and inner door created something approaching an air lock. She could see the place was partly furnished, two stretches of tread which would soon become a staircase lay on their side filling the hall. Jill was holding the top of the ladder, looking down,

“Come up and see,” beckoned Jill.

“Dinner's nearly ready.”

“Oh please! Just quickly come up, it won’t take a second,’ begged Jill from the top of the ladder. So she gingerly took the rungs and climbed. Once at the top Jill dragged her along the passage.

“That's my room. We have been sleeping here for weeks. There's Jack's. Grandad Joe and Grandma have there own rooms downstairs, Mummy and Daddy are at the end,” “Come and look at this,” called out Jack.

Jill dragged her to a room with “Skool” stencilled on the door. The room had no window, natural light radiated from cut glass prisms set in the ceiling, and the walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books. ‘It is like an old fashioned library,’ she thought. There were a couple of settees and an easy chair. In the centre of the room an old-style flattop console, switched off and covered with books.

“We have been doing astronomy today,” Jill announced proudly. A large book was open with a double spread showing the face of the sun surrounded by text explaining sunspots. Jill continued, “The sun gets cold sores on its face. Every twelve years or so,”

Jack chipped in, “Daddy showed us how to catch the sun in a bucket so that we could study it without burning our eyes,”

“You could have used this console and got an animation from The Source,” she said. “Daddy says it is best to find things out for yourself,” said the young girl.

“She means it doesn't work,” interjected Jack with a smirk.

“It does. It does. It just goes slow and costs too much,”

Jack continued “Anyway. There are sunspots now and we have seen them and there's going to be or..or or..”

“Aur-roar-ahs,” finished Jill

“I know, I know and if it is nice tonight we will be able to stay up late and see them...”

Over the meal, Mary asked the children to tell the assembled company what they knew about the sun and sun spots and Fanny and Michael asked questions. Soon her man was chipping in, “draw the blind please, Jack,” and, while taking her silk scarf in hand, he switched off the lights and opened the fire door of the Rayburn. The cloth rippled in his hands, reflecting the cherry glow of the fire, and....

“There, the aurora jackandjillus.”

The children looked up in amazement as the adults laughed at their delighted faces. And she knew that tonight or one night soon she would find herself laying with him, in a field, looking up at the sky and ...wishing they didn’t have company.

Work went on in new house, kitchen and garden. The cow was milked, the pig fed, the sheep counted, a sumptuous meal consumed. Would it ever get dark? The children kept coming in to report the appearance of this star and that. Planets, not stars. By name.

Much later, the sky as black as your hat, studded with a myriad stars and no hint of a moon, they all walked up the grassy lane to the top of the hill, behind the new house until they could see to the north. Not a man made light to be seen, just the sound of an owl hoot. The children tried to count stars. The grown-ups stayed silent. Disappointed and silent. They knew that there would be no display tonight.

On the way back Michael said, “I'll connect up the console and we will see if we can get a forecast from The Source.”

She said to him, “Haven't you got your Pocket Console with you?”

“Of course,” replied Michael.

“Well get a forecast now.”

And so he pulled a shining sliver of steel from his pocket and said, stiltedly, “Aurora Borealis, forecast, Carrick Hills region.”

A couple of days later they retraced their steps up the hill...and they hadn't got far when they knew that their impatience had been rewarded. The sky roared and rippled, they lay entranced, heedless of the chill. When the cold finally began to bite, they carried the sleeping children back to the new house, up the stairs and lay them down to sleep. Joe invited Michael and Mary to cross the yard and raise a glass to the old house.

“Tonight will be the last night in this house for Fanny and Me. Here's to the old place,” Joe raised his glass to an echo of ‘Cheers!’

And Fanny said, “In the morning we'll move you two to your new quarters.”

“New quarters?” she said, “Where?”

“Haven't you seen the attic suite in the new house, dear?”

Breakfast next day was an uncharacteristically hasty affair and soon they were ferrying furniture, pots and pans and boxes across the yard. The old house was stripped bare. The new quarters, up the second flight of stairs, were the antithesis of the old; warm, bright, complete with en suite. And a king sized bed with a duvet, not even a hint of a squeaky spring. The whole operation was underpinned by talk of last night’s aurora and of the next.

That night, up on the hill, Nature's Light Show was even more spectacular. And such was their elation when, reluctantly, they returned home that their mood was not even dented by the power cut that had darkened the farm.

“Bloody utilities,” muttered Joe, “they won't be taking money off me under false pretences for much longer.”

While Joe went off to find an oil lamp or two from the old house, Mary lit some candles and Fanny lifted the cover to the hob and put the kettle on the Rayburn. And so with candles in hand, singing, ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ they all went to bed, feeling happy and elated.

In the morning Joe came in with a pail of milk, “I 'ad to do 'er by 'and this morning, still no power.”

The kettle was singing on the Rayburn and a pot of porridge was promising breakfast. Mary said to Michael, “I think I'll ring up and ask when we can expect power back.”

“I've already tried,” he said, “the phone's dead too.”

With a feline smile, she said, “Use your PC, sweetheart.”

He slipped the device from his shirt pocket, “S'funny,” he said, “no signal.”

Mary switched on a portable audiator. It hissed unhelpfully. Joe left the kitchen, crossed to the old house and returned with an old fashioned DAB radio.

“Dad, you haven't used that for years,” he found some batteries in the kitchen table drawer, set it down and switched it on. It burbled unhelpfully. He switched from DAB to FM hiss to LW. Still tuned to the old BBC frequency of 1500 metres, a weak signal intoned a list of strange messages. When a new, more urgent voice broke in, they all listened intently.

“This is the National Security Authority of the Unity Government calling all British Citizens. Here is the first bulletin from the Emergency Coordinating Committee, the ECC. Last night a solar storm induced massive power surges of current in the Nation’s Network of high voltage power distribution cables. The extent of the damage is currently being assessed but it is believed that much of the country is without electrical power.

As a consequence most communications, water, sewage, gas and fuel facilities are inoperative. We will report to the populace, on this frequency, as soon as information becomes available.”

The children had stopped teasing the dogs and the pots were drawn off the hob. They were all sitting now, stunned and silent as the voice from the radio continued;

“This Committee decrees that all military, police and medical personnel should report to their place of work or nearest appropriate facility with all urgency. Tomorrow, all electrical, water and sewage engineers will be required to report to their places of work. These personnel must, I repeat must, carry full ID at all times. All other citizens will remain at home and await further instruction. I say again all other citizens will remain at home at all times. Unidentified persons failing to observe this decree are liable to be shot. Stay tuned to this station, the official source of information from the ECC.

There now follows a series of messages for key persons and organizations,” and the voice resumed reading oblique messages reminiscent of the BBC calling SOE agents in WW2.

It was a long while before anybody spoke, the radio was re-broadcasting the ECC bulletin when Joe switched it off.

“We'll save the batteries,” then, slowly, he said, “I have never told you this, Fanny, or you Michael and Mary, but I came here to achieve self sufficiency. Not, as you all think, out of an innate desire to avoid paying bills, or out of a dislike of my fellow man, but as a hedge against global warming. Not even that, as a way avoiding the pestilence, war and disease that mass population moves would wreak upon the civilised world. That didn't happen. I didn't foresee this so I watered my plans down. We can’t survive here forever.”

“It has taken so long, but we are self sufficient now, we'll have electricity in a day or two, the farmyard digester is giving us enough gas for the tractor, the coppice gives us fuel for cooking, the orchard, the garden and the animals will feed us,” Michael assured everyone.

“And I have just restocked the winter emergency larder, toilet rolls, canned meats and fruit,” added Fanny.

“As I said, we can’t survive here forever. Sure, we can keep going for quite a while, years probably. But the tractor won't run forever and our tools will wear out, pumps block, motors fail. And so do crops....We need to plan, make priorities, dig-in,” said Joe, suddenly straighter, in command., “the house is just about done, the food situation is good, I grant you but it won't do any harm to start bottling fruit, Fanny. I think we should convert the ground floor of the old house into a slaughter room and butchery, and adapt the upstairs rooms for storage. But first, we must pull up the drawbridge. Disguise the road gate with brushwood, bring the sheep into the paddock and keep a low profile. The curfew won't work. There will be piratical bands on the loose before long. So we’ll need to be ready.”

Eventually she stood and spoke, “We must go.”

“No,” they chorused, “do you want to get shot?”

Joe added, “We need your skills and your labour.”

“We must!” she cried and ran upstairs.

He followed. She was crying, packing a bag. He put his arms around her,

“We are meant to be here, fate…”

“Ha. The great rationalist. We must go.”

Fanny came in, “I understand, dear, but he's right.”

“I have to go, I need.....”

“No dear, you don't. Now is your time. Time to forget The Pill,”

And she was surprised as the tears she wept were tears of relief.

“We are meant to be here, fate…”