The wind strokes and stirs the wheat.
The wheat ears go pitter patter pitter.
I’ll never get over Vinny. Never. I know it.
TWO HOURS AFTER the roundabout I get to an end-of-the-world village called Eastchurch. There’s a sign saying ROCHESTER 23. Twenty-three miles? Little wonder I’ve got blisters like Ayers Rock on my feet. Strange thing is, after the Texaco garage in Rochester it’s all a bit of a blur till the Kingsferry Bridge onto Sheppey. Actually, it’s a total blur. Like a section of a song that’s been taped over. Was I walking along in a trance? Eastchurch is in a trance. There’s one small Spar supermarket, but it’s shut ’cause it’s Sunday and the newsagent next to it’s shut, too, but the owner’s moving about inside so I knock till he opens up and get a packet of Digestive biscuits and a jar of peanut butter, plus another pack of Rothmans and a box of matches. He asks if I’m sixteen so I look him straight in the eye and say I turned seventeen in March, actually, which does the trick. Outside I light up as a mod and his modette drive by on a scooter, staring at me, but my mind’s on the shrinking pounds and pence I’ve got left. I’ll get more money tomorrow, as long as Mr. Harty doesn’t play funny buggers, but I don’t know how long this working holiday of mine’s likely to last. If Vinny and Stella were out when Mam or Dad went to find me at Vinny’s house, they won’t know I’m not with him, so they won’t know I’ve left Gravesend.
There’s a phone box by the bus stop. Mam’d go all sarky and Mammish if I phone her, but if I phone Brendan’s hopefully Ruth’ll answer, and I’ll say to get the message to Dad—not Mam, Dad—that I’m okay but I’ve left school and I’ll be away for a bit. Then Mam won’t be able to send me on a you-could’ve-been-abducted guilt trip the next time we meet. But when I open up the phone box I find the receiver’s been ripped off its cord, so that’s that.
Perhaps I’ll ask to phone from the farm. Perhaps.
• • •
IT’S NEARLY FOUR P.M. by the time I turn down Old Ferry Lane onto the chalky track that leads to Black Elm Farm. On-and-off sprinklers in the fields spray cool clouds, and I sort of drink the vapor in like super-fine water-floss, and look at the little rainbows. The farmhouse itself is an old, hunkered-down brick building with a modern bit stuck on the side, and there’s a big steel barn, a couple of buildings made from concrete blocks, and a windbreak of those tall thin trees. Here comes this black dog, like a fat seal on stumpy legs, barking its head off and wagging its whole body, and in five seconds flat we’re best mates. Suddenly I miss Newky, and I pet the dog’s head.
“I see you’ve met Sheba.” A girl in dungarees steps out of the older part of the house; she must be about eighteen. “You’ve just arrived for picking?” Her accent’s funny—Welsh, I think.
“Yeah. Yes. Where do I … check in?”
She finds my “check in” amusing, which pisses me off ’cause how am I s’posed to know the right word? She jerks her thumb at the door—she’s wearing wristbands over both wrists like some tennis star but they just look spaz to me—and walks over to the brick barn to tell all the other pickers ’bout the new girl who reckons she’s staying at a hotel.
“THERE’LL BE TWENTY pallets’ worth by three o’clock tomorrow, see,” comes a man’s voice from the office down the hall, “and if your truck isn’t here at one minute past three, then the lot’ll be going to the Fine Fare depot in Aylesford.” He hangs up and adds, “Lying twat.” By now I’ve recognized Mr. Harty from my phone call this morning. The door behind me flies open and an older woman in stained overalls, green wellies, and a spotted neckerchief thing sort of shoos me on. “Chop suey, young lady, the doctor will see you now. Mush-mush. New picker, yes? Of course you are.” She bustles me forwards into a poky office smelling of potatoes in a sack. There’s a desk, a typewriter, a phone, filing cabinets, a poster with GLORIOUS RHODESIA on it and photos of wildlife, and a view of a farmyard and a decomposing tractor. Gabriel Harty’s in his sixties, has a low-tide sort of face and hair tufting out of his nose and ears. Ignoring me, he tells the woman, “Bill Dean was just on the blower. Wanted to discuss ‘a distribution niggle.’ ”
“Let me guess,” says the woman. “His drivers have all got bubonic plague, so could we run tomorrow’s strawberries over to Canterbury.”
“Ye-es. Know what else he said? ‘I wish you landowners would try to help the rest of us.’ Landowner. The bank owns the land and the land owns you. That’s what being a landowner means. He’s the one taking his family to the Seychelles, or wherever it is.” Mr. Harty relights his pipe and stares out of the window. “Who are you?”
I follow his gaze to the dead tractor until I realize he means me. “I’m the new picker.”
“New picker, is it? Not sure if we need any more.”
“We spoke on the phone this morning, Mr. Harty.”
“A long time ago, this morning. Ancient history.”
“But …” If I don’t have a job here, what’ll I do?
The woman looks over from the filing cabinet: “Gabriel.”
“But we’ve already got this—this Holly Benson-Hedges girl on her way. She rang up this morning.”
“That’s me,” I tell him, “but it’s Holly Rothmans and …” Hang on, is he being funny? He’s got one of those faces where you can’t tell. “That’s me.”
“That was you, was it?” Mr. Harty’s pipe makes a death-rattle noise. “That’s lucky, that is. Then we’ll see you tomorrow at six, sharp. Not two minutes past six. No. Nobody sleeps in, we’re not a holiday camp. Now. I have more telephone calls to make.”
“THE PLACE IS rather deserted on Sundays,” says Mrs. Harty, as we walk back across the farmyard. She’s posher than her husband and I wonder what their story is. “Most of our Kentish pickers go home on Sundays for a few creature comforts, and the student mob have decamped to the beach at Leysdown. They’ll be back by evening, unless they get waylaid at the Shurland Arms. So: The shower’s over there, the loo’s down there, and there’s the laundry room. Where did you say you’ve come from today?”
“Oh, just …” Sheba dashes up and runs happy rings round us, which gives me longer to get my story straight “… Southend. I just took my O levels last month. My parents are busy working and I want to save a bit of money, and a friend of a friend worked here a couple of summers ago, so my dad said okay, now I’m sixteen, so …”
“So here you are. Is it sayonara to school?”
Sheba follows a scent trail behind a pile of tires.
“Will you be going back to do A levels, Holly?”
“Oh, right. Depends on my results, I s’pose.”
Satisfied, and not that interested, Mrs. Harty leads me into the brick barn through the wide-open wooden door. “Here’s where most of the lads sleep.” Twenty or so metal beds are arranged in two rows, like in a hospital but with barn walls, a stone floor, and no windows. What I think of sleeping among a bunch of snoring, farting, wanking guys must show on my face, ’cause Mrs. Harty says, “Don’t worry—we knocked some partitions up this spring,” she points to the end, “to give the ladies some privacy.” The last third of the barn’s walled off to a height of two men or so with a plywood partition thing. It’s got a doorway with an old sheet across it. Someone’s chalked THE HAREM above the doorway, which someone’s drawn an arrow from to the words SIZE DOES MATTER GARY SO DREAM ON. Through the sheet, it’s a bit darker, and like a changing room in a clothes shop, with three partitions on either side, each with its own doorway, two beds, plus a bare electric bulb dangling from the rafters. If Dad was here he’d wince and mutter about health and safety regs, but it’s warm and dry and safe enough. Plus there’s another door in the barn wall with an inside bolt, so if there was a fire you could get out in time. Only thing is, all the beds look taken with a sleeping bag, a backpack, and stuff, until we get to the last cubicle, the only one with the light on. Mrs. Harty knocks on the door frame and says, “Knock-knock, Gwyn.”
A voice inside answers, “Mrs. Harty?”
“I’ve brought you a roommate.”
Inside, the Welsh dungaree-wearing smirker is sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing in a diary or something. Steam’s rising from a flask on the floor, and smoke from a cigarette balanced on a bottle. Gwyn looks at me and gestures at the bed, like, It’s all yours. “Welcome to my humble abode. Which is now our humble abode.”
“Well, I’ll leave you two girls to it,” says Mrs. Harty, and goes, and Gwyn gets back to her diary. Well, that’s bloody nice, that is. F’Chrissakes, she could try to make a bit of small talk. Scratty scrat-scrat goes her Biro. Probably writing ’bout me right now, and probably in Welsh, so I can’t read it. Well, if she’s not talking to me, I’m not talking to her. I dump my duffel bag on the bed, ignoring a Stella Yearwood–sounding voice saying that Holly Sykes’s great bid for freedom has ended in a total shit-hole. I lie next to my duffel bag ’cause I’ve got nowhere else to go and no energy. My feet feel well and truly Black & Deckered. I don’t have a sleeping bag, either.
MY GOALIE WHACKS the ball clean down the table and, slam!, straight into Gary the student’s goal and the impressed onlookers cheer. Brendan calls that shot my Peter Shilton Special, and used to whinge ’bout my left-handed goalie’s unfair advantage. Five-nil to me, my fifth victory in a row, and we’re playing winner stays on. “She bloody demolished me, what can I say?” says Gary, his face fiery and speech slurred after a few Heinekens. “Holly, you’re a progeny, no, a progidy, thassit, a prodigy, a bona fide bar-football prodigy—and there’s no dishonor in losing to … one of them.” Gary does a pantomime bow and reaches over the table with his can of Heineken so that I have to clink mine against his. “How d’you get to be so good?” asks this girl who’s easy to remember ’cause she’s Debby from Derby. I just shrug and say I always used to play at my cousin’s. But I remember Brendan saying, “I cannot believe I’ve been beaten by a girl,” which I’ve only just realized he said to make my victory sweeter.
I’ve had enough bar football for now, so I go out for a smoke. The common room’s the old stables and it still whiffs a bit of horse poo, but it’s livelier than the Captain Marlow on a Sunday night. Must be twenty-five pickers sat round the tables yacking, snacking, smoking, drinking, flirting, and playing cards, and although there’s no telly someone’s got a paint-spattered ghetto blaster and a Siouxsie and the Banshees tape. Outside, the fields of Black Elm Farm slope down to the sea, and lights dot-to-dot the coast past Faversham, past Whitstable, and further. You’d never believe it’s a world where people get murdered or mugged or kicked out by their mothers.
It’s nine P.M.; Mam’ll be saying “Lights out and God bless” to Jacko and Sharon, then pouring herself a glass of wine and watching Bergerac on the telly. Or maybe tonight she’ll go downstairs to bitch about me to one of her supergrasses: “I don’t know where I went wrong with that one, so help me, God, I don’t.” Dad’ll be telling Nipper the plumber and TJ the sparky and old Mr. Sharkey, “It’ll all come out in the wash,” or something else that sounds wise but means nothing.
I get my box of Rothmans out of my shirt pocket—eight gone, twelve left—but before I can light up Gary appears in his REALITY IS AN ILLUSION CAUSED BY A LACK OF ALCOHOL T-shirt and offers me one of his Silk Cut, saying, “This one’s on me, Holly.” I thank him and he says, “You won it fair and square,” and his eyes flicker up and down my chest, like Vinny’s do. Did. Gary’s ’bout to say something else but one of his mates calls him over, and Gary says, “I’ll see you later,” and goes. Not if I see you first, I think. I’ve had it with boys.
Three-quarters of the pickers are students at college or uni or waiting to go this September, and I’m the youngest by a couple of years, even counting my age as sixteen, not fifteen. I’m trying not to act all shy, ’cause that might give my age away, but they aren’t going to be plumbers or hairdressers or bin collectors: They’ll be computer programmers or teachers or solicitors, and it shows. It’s in how they speak. They use precise words, like they own them, like Jacko does, in fact, but not like any kid in my year at school’d dare to. Ed Brubeck’ll be one of them in two years. I look over at Gary and just at that moment he sort of senses me and gives me a fancy-meeting-you-here look, and I glance away before he gets the wrong idea.
The pickers who aren’t students sort of stand out. Gwyn’s one. She’s playing draughts with Marion and Linda and, apart from a “Hi” and a fake smile when I came in, she’s ignored me. Cheers very much, Gwyn. Marion’s a bit simple and her sister Linda fusses all mummishly and finishes her sentences for her. Picking fruit at Black Elm Farm’s their annual holiday, sort of. There’s a couple, Stuart and Gina, who have their own tent, tucked away in a dip. They’re late twenties, look like folk singers, with earrings, and hair in pony-tails, and actually they are amateur folk singers, and busk in market towns. Gina’s taking me and Debby food shopping to the Spar at Eastchurch after I’ve been paid. They act as go-betweens to the other pickers and Mr. Harty, Debby told me. Last, there’s a kid called Alan Wall, who sleeps in a tiny caravan parked round the side of the farmhouse. I saw him hanging out washing to dry when I was having a look around. He can’t be more than a year or two older than me, but his scrawny body’s tough as cables and he’s tanned like tea. Debby told me he’s a gypsy, or a traveler, as you’re s’posed to say these days, and that Mr. Harty hires someone from his family every year, but Debby didn’t know if it’s a tradition or debt or superstition, or what.
COMING BACK FROM the toilet, I see a narrow canyon between the farmhouse and a shed. Someone’s waiting. A match strikes. “Fancy meeting you here,” says Gary. “Care for another smoke?”
Yes, Gary’s good-looking, but he’s at least a bit drunk, and I’ve known him all of two hours. “I’ll get back to the common room, thanks.”
“Nah, you’ll share a smoke with me. Go on, Hol, everyone’s got to die of something.” He’s already stuck his box of Silk Cuts in my face with one stuck out for me to take with my lips. I can’t refuse without making it into a big issue so I use my fingers and say, “Thanks.”
“Here’s a light … So tell me. Your boyfriend in Southend must be missing you something rotten.”
I think of Vinny and heave out a “Christ, no,” think, You idiot, Sykes, and add, “Kind of, yeah, he is, actually.”
“Glad that’s sorted.” In the glow of his fag, Gary grins dead slinkily. “Let’s go for a stroll and see the stars. Tell me about Mr. Christ-no-sort-of-yeah.”
I really don’t want Gary’s fingers inside my bra or anywhere else, but how do I tell him to piss off without bruising his pride?
“Shyness is cute,” says Gary, “but it stops you living. C’mon, I’ve got alcohol, nicotine … anything else you might need.”
Christ, if guys could be girls being hit on by guys, just for one night, lines as cheesy as that’d go extinct. “Look, Gary, now’s not a good time.” I try to walk around him to get back to the farmyard.
“You’ve been eyeing me up.” His arm comes down like a carpark barrier, pressing against my stomach. I smell his aftershave, his beer, and his horniness, sort of. “All night. Now’s your chance.”
If I tell him to feck right off, he’ll probably turn all the pickers against me. If I go nuclear and call for help it’ll be his version against the Hysterical New Girl’s, and how old is she again, and do her parents really know she’s here anyway?
“Polish your mating rituals, Octopus Boy,” says a Welsh voice. Me and Gary both jump a mile. It’s Gwyn. “Your seductions look very like muggings to me.”
“We were—we were—we were just talking.” Gary’s already scuttling away to the common room. “That’s all.”
“Annoying but harmless.” Gwyn watches him go. “Like mouth ulcers. He’s propositioned every female on the farm except Sheba.”
Being rescued’s humiliating and what comes out is a grumpy “I can look after myself.”
Gwyn says, a bit too sincerely, “Oh, I don’t doubt that.”
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Is she taking the piss? “I could’ve handled him.”
“You don’t half remind me of me, Holly.”
How do you answer that? “Up the Junction” by Squeeze booms from the ghetto-blaster. Gwyn stoops. “Look, Octopus Boy dropped his ciggies.” She lobs them my way and I catch the box. “Hand them back or keep them as compensation for harassment. Your call.”
I imagine Gary’s version of this. “He’ll hate me now.”
“He’ll be scared shitless you’ll tell everyone what a horse’s arse he made of himself. Rejection makes lads like our Gaz feel four feet tall and two inches long, full size. Anyhow, I came to say I borrowed a sleeping bag off Mrs. Harty for you. God only knows how many previous owners it’s had, but it’s been washed so the stains aren’t sticky at least, and the barn can get chilly at night. I’m turning in, so if I’m asleep before you, sweet dreams. The hooter goes at five-thirty.”