Commie. He might even have used the word. And Douglas, who was astute enough to understand that his father was not likely to take seriously a plan that was half thought-out, had swallowed his words and gone off to oversee the disinfecting of the milking parlour.
But now he had a concrete set of proposals, which even his father would have to admit was likely to take the estate forward into the future, make it a model not just for agricultural excellence but for social change. He could follow in the tradition of those great reformers: Rowntree and Cadbury, those who had thought that making money was an insufficient aim unless it led to social and environmental betterment. He conjured up images of contented workers eating home-produced food and studying to better themselves instead of liquefying their weekly wages down at the White Hart. It was 1965. Things were changing fast, even if the inhabitants of Dere Hampton were unwilling to acknowledge it.
He placed the pages neatly together, laid them reverently in a card wallet and tucked it under his arm. He did his best to ignore the pile of letters to which he had yet to reply. He had spent much of the last month fending off complaints from ramblers and dog-walkers over the fact that he had erected a post-and-rail fence along the middle of the thirty-acre fields that led down to the wood to let the two sides for sheep grazing. (He had always fancied sheep. He still remembered fondly a youthful stay with a Cumbrian sheep farmer who counted his animals using an ancient and incomprehensible dialect: Yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, covera, dik . . . That the villagers could still walk down the field had not pacified them: they didn’t like, they said, being ‘penned in’. Douglas had been tempted to retort that they were lucky to have access to it at all, and that if the estate wasn’t made financially secure by such measures it would be sold off in parcels for development, like the once-grand Rampton estate four miles away. And see how they would like that.
But conscious that, as a Fairley-Hulme, he had at least to pay lip service to villagers’ opinions, he had suggested they write their complaints in letter form and he would do his best to address them.
He glanced at his watch, then tapped his fingers on the side of the desk, a mixture of nervousness and excitement. His mother should be preparing lunch. When his father retreated into his office for his usual half-hour of ‘paperwork’ (often involving the brief closure of his eyes – just for resting purposes, you understand), he would present his ideas. And perhaps make his own, more contemporary mark on the Dereward estate.
A short distance away, Douglas Fairley-Hulme’s mother took off her gloves and hat, and shepherded the dogs into the boot room, noting from the clock in the hall that she had arrived home almost half an hour before lunch was due. Not that there was anything to organise; she had set off in the expectation that she might at least be invited in for coffee and prepared everything beforehand accordingly. But despite her having walked all that distance, and appearing at the doorway quite windblown – every year, she forgot how March could surprise one – and obviously in need of some refreshment, her daughter-in-law had declined to invite her in.
She had not got off to a good start with Athene. She failed to see how anyone could. The girl was a wearisome sort, always making impossible demands of Douglas but rarely wanting to do anything wifely and supportive in return. But Cyril had told her she should try a little harder to make friends. ‘Have a coffee morning or something. Douglas says she gets bored. Easier for him if you two are friends.’
She had never particularly enjoyed the company of other women. Too much gossiping and worrying over things that didn’t matter. One of the disadvantages of being the matriarch of the estate was that people somehow expected
But now he had a concrete set of proposals, which even his father would have to admit was likely to take the estate forward into the future, make it a model not just for agricultural excellence but for social change. He could follow in the tradition of those great reformers: Rowntree and Cadbury, those who had thought that making money was an insufficient aim unless it led to social and environmental betterment. He conjured up images of contented workers eating home-produced food and studying to better themselves instead of liquefying their weekly wages down at the White Hart. It was 1965. Things were changing fast, even if the inhabitants of Dere Hampton were unwilling to acknowledge it.
He placed the pages neatly together, laid them reverently in a card wallet and tucked it under his arm. He did his best to ignore the pile of letters to which he had yet to reply. He had spent much of the last month fending off complaints from ramblers and dog-walkers over the fact that he had erected a post-and-rail fence along the middle of the thirty-acre fields that led down to the wood to let the two sides for sheep grazing. (He had always fancied sheep. He still remembered fondly a youthful stay with a Cumbrian sheep farmer who counted his animals using an ancient and incomprehensible dialect: Yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, covera, dik . . . That the villagers could still walk down the field had not pacified them: they didn’t like, they said, being ‘penned in’. Douglas had been tempted to retort that they were lucky to have access to it at all, and that if the estate wasn’t made financially secure by such measures it would be sold off in parcels for development, like the once-grand Rampton estate four miles away. And see how they would like that.
But conscious that, as a Fairley-Hulme, he had at least to pay lip service to villagers’ opinions, he had suggested they write their complaints in letter form and he would do his best to address them.
He glanced at his watch, then tapped his fingers on the side of the desk, a mixture of nervousness and excitement. His mother should be preparing lunch. When his father retreated into his office for his usual half-hour of ‘paperwork’ (often involving the brief closure of his eyes – just for resting purposes, you understand), he would present his ideas. And perhaps make his own, more contemporary mark on the Dereward estate.
A short distance away, Douglas Fairley-Hulme’s mother took off her gloves and hat, and shepherded the dogs into the boot room, noting from the clock in the hall that she had arrived home almost half an hour before lunch was due. Not that there was anything to organise; she had set off in the expectation that she might at least be invited in for coffee and prepared everything beforehand accordingly. But despite her having walked all that distance, and appearing at the doorway quite windblown – every year, she forgot how March could surprise one – and obviously in need of some refreshment, her daughter-in-law had declined to invite her in.
She had not got off to a good start with Athene. She failed to see how anyone could. The girl was a wearisome sort, always making impossible demands of Douglas but rarely wanting to do anything wifely and supportive in return. But Cyril had told her she should try a little harder to make friends. ‘Have a coffee morning or something. Douglas says she gets bored. Easier for him if you two are friends.’
She had never particularly enjoyed the company of other women. Too much gossiping and worrying over things that didn’t matter. One of the disadvantages of being the matriarch of the estate was that people somehow expected
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