Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe Page B

they’d see that she was so much less now. Less of a person than she’d been when we’d lived here and we’d had pleasant folk all around us. Town folk who didn’t mind everything so terribly and who had faults of their own.
    And Mrs Vanderbus, being Dutch, would be honest and unafraid and say, ‘Eleezabet, what have you done to yourself? You’re so thin, so tired, oh my Got, you must get away from that evil willage.’ And so forth. And the lovely Millwards would say, ‘You look splendid, Elizabeth, the country air must be doing you a power of good.’ And that would be worse.
    ‘Do you remember I heard Father Xmas land on the roof?’ I said, laughing.
    ‘Oh yes,’ said our mother, ‘but it was just the aerial had fallen down and was blowing around.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said my sister.
    ‘I know,’ I said, but I hadn’t known.
    In Fenwick’s later, our mother left us in the queue for Father Xmas and went to do some shopping, and when we got close to the end of the line I felt I couldn’t go in and I let my sister and Jack go in without me. It wasn’t the real Father Xmas – I knew there was no such person, I’d known for a while. Just as I’d known that the best, most exciting thing ever to happen hadn’t actually happened – I’d just imagined it and clung on.
    I sat on a toadstool at the door to the grotto and enjoyed the thought of the TV aerial blowing about on the roof. The new meaning to the old memory. And then, thinking I had about five minutes, I went to look at some gloves.

6
     
    We loved to walk in the meres – a network of narrow lanes between the fields that farmers had trodden, ridden and driven into existence over the years. Wide enough for a tractor, just, they were perfect for ponies or walking children and edged with charming tunnel-forming trees and bushes from which things would dart and scamper. We liked playing in the streamy ditches that ran alongside and, because my sister loved farms and all farmy things, we’d peek into farmyards and little paddocks where baby things could often be seen.
    It was the animals she loved, of course, and it slightly bothered her that the farmers didn’t seem to like them that much. She noticed that farmers never stroked their little calves but would shove them aside as if they were nothing but a nuisance, and if a hungry piglet poked his little pink snout up, a farmer wouldn’t smile or say, ‘Hey, little fella,’ he’d bash it on the nose with the bucket. My sister loved all animals and it was her ambition to see a family of hedgehogs in line – as you see on greetings cards. And she had a list of mammals she’d seen, like other people have lists of birds or trains. She’d spotted her first badger by the age of four and had been pleased to see it. She used to say that only people who loved animals should be allowed to be farmers and those who were indifferent might become a policeman or butcher instead and just have the one dog.
    I stuck up for the unloving farmers, explaining that farming was a job and the farmer couldn’t keep stroking the babies and being sentimental or he’d get nothing done and the corn wouldchoke in the weeds etc. Farming was like being a parent: you might coo for a moment at someone’s baby in a pram or a kitten in a brandy glass, but when it came to day-to-day life you just got on with it and if your kids came too close, you’d shove them out of the way and get on with whatever you were doing.
    Anyway, one day in early spring my sister suggested a visit to Turner’s Farm, a mixed sheep and cow farm. The main reason being that she’d heard that some early lambs had been born. But also she was wondering if we might add Farmer Turner to the Man List, him being a farmer and all the associated benefits. She was hoping of course that he’d turn out to be an animal-loving farmer. I was dubious on all counts, having seen him looking stern and overweight in a dirty vest. But we set off down the meres to investigate