The Peacock Emporium(16)

“I’ve been thinking for ages. I mean, since the stuff with the CAP, and you talking about giving up on the dairy side of things. We might look at doing things a bit differently.”

Cyril watched his son’s stammering explanation impassively. Then he lowered his head toward the page. “Pass me my glasses.”

Douglas held out the spectacles. He could hear his mother in the kitchen placing crockery on the tray. He could hear the blood in his ears. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, then took them out again, fighting the urge to leap forward and point to separate paragraphs on the pages.

“There’s a map under there,” he said, unable to contain himself any longer. “I’ve color-coded the fields according to usage.”

Time seemed to drag, then stall. Outside, the dogs barked manically at some offender. Douglas, staring at his father’s face, saw not even a flicker of emotion as he methodically scanned the pages.

His father removed his glasses, and sat back slowly in his chair. His pipe had gone out and, after examining it, he laid it on the table beside him. “This what they taught you at agricultural college, was it?”

“No,” said Douglas. “Actually they’re pretty well all my own ideas. I mean, I’ve been reading up and everything, about kibbutzes—and you know all about Rowntree, of course, but—”

“Because, if so, we wasted every bloody penny sending you there.”

It came out with force, as if the words had been shot from a gun, and Douglas jumped, as if they had physically hit him.

His father’s face, as ever, revealed almost nothing. But there was a brightness behind his eyes that suggested intense hidden anger.

They sat in silence, eyes locked.

“I thought you had sense. I thought we’d raised you with some notion of what was right and—”

“This is right.” Douglas heard his own voice rise in protest. “It is right to give something back to people. It is right that everyone gets a share in the land.”

“Give it all away, shall I? Dish it out in parcels to anyone who wants it? Ask them to form a queue?”

“It would still be our land, Dad. It would just enable other people to work it. We don’t even use it all properly.”

“You think people round here want to work the land? Have you actually asked any of them? The young people don’t want to be plowing and drilling. They don’t want to be out in all weathers pulling weeds and spreading muck. They want to be in the cities, listening to popular music and all sorts. Do you know how long it took me to find enough hands just to get the hay in last year?”

“We’d find people. There are always people who need jobs.”

His father jabbed at the papers with disgust. “This is not some social experiment. This is our blood, our sweat in this soil. I can’t believe I’ve taught my son everything I know about this estate, only to have him want to give it away. Not even sell it, mind. Give it away. You—you’re worse than a girl.”

He spat the words at his son, as if he were bilious. Douglas had rarely heard his father’s voice raised against him, and discovered he was shaking. He tried to collect his thoughts against his father’s concentrated anger and saw his mother, standing stationary in the doorway, tray in hand.

Without a word, his father stood up and stomped past her, ramming his hat onto his head as he went.



* * *



—

Douglas’s mother placed the coffee on the table, and stared at her son. He wore the same look of contained shock and misery as when he was eight and his father had beaten him for letting one of the dogs get into the calving shed. She fought the urge to comfort him, and instead asked cautiously what had happened.

For several minutes Douglas didn’t answer, and she wondered whether he was trying to hold back tears. He gestured toward some papers on the table. “I had some ideas for the estate.” He paused, then spoke in a strangled voice: “Father didn’t like them.”

“Shall I look?”

“Feel free.”

She sat down carefully in her husband’s chair and scanned the pages. It took her several minutes to grasp what he was proposing, and she stared at the colored map, slowly building a picture of her son’s vision.

Her initial sympathy for her son was replaced by her own swiftly increasing anger. Young people could be so thoughtless. They never considered what previous generations had had to go through.

“I suggest you throw these on the fire,” she said, sweeping them into a pile.

“What?”

“Get rid of them. If you’re lucky, your father will forget this conversation ever happened.”

Her son’s face was a mask of frustration and incredulity. “You’re not even going to consider them?”

“I have considered them, Douglas, and they are . . . inappropriate.”

“I’m twenty-seven years old, Mother. I deserve to have a say in the running of the estate.”

“You deserve?” Her chest was tight, and her voice came in short bursts: “That’s all your generation cares about—what you supposedly deserve. Your ideas are an insult to your father, and until you can comprehend that I suggest you and I end this conversation here.”

Douglas had both hands on the table now, was leaning down on straightened arms, as if he had been almost felled by her response. “I can’t believe you’re both reacting like this.”