Before She Was Mine (33 page)

‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ said the stall holder, in her soft Midlands burr.

‘This organic nonsense. It’s just a way of screwing more money out of the consumer, isn’t it?’

The boy laid down the magnifying glass and moved on. I exchanged glances with Liv.

‘Would you like a Soil Association leaflet?’ said the stall holder. ‘You can read more about what the organic movement’s trying to achieve—’

‘No I wouldn’t. These poor saps might be taken in by your rhetoric, but we both know that the whole organic movement’s nothing more than an attempt to discredit ordinary
farmers and screw cash out of the government and get customers to pay extra.’

Geraint whispered something to Liv. I wanted to peer round the edge of the display and see this old boot for myself, but I thought that might make the situation worse.

‘It’s about respect for the land,’ began the stall holder.

‘Oh, please. Don’t start that tree-hugging nonsense. I’ve worked the land all my life, no one knows it better than I do. This is just— See, look at this:
“chemical-free”. It’s rubbish. Define chemical!’

The girl said nothing.

‘Everything’s
chemical
,’ the boot went on. ‘Water’s a chemical. We’re made up of chemicals. So how can you claim your – products – are
chemical-free?’

‘It’s in the Soil Association literature. We mean anything synthesised in a lab. Produced artificially. Man-made. Not naturally occurring.’

‘Your flapjacks are man-made. Or did you dig them up this morning and shake the earth off them?’ I could imagine her turning round to share the joke. ‘These health claims you
make for organic foods, they’re completely without foundation, aren’t they? Outrageous lies. All the pesticides we use on our farm have been thoroughly tested for safety.’

‘Like DDT was,’ muttered Liv.

‘People
want
perfect food. Don’t you understand? They don’t like blemishes and worm holes and blight on their nice shiny apples. And they
don’t
want to pay
for all the crops lost to disease. Why should they?’

‘We feel consumers ought to have a choice,’ said the stall holder feebly. I could see her in my mind’s eye, her head bowed, plaits drooping. Most of us had come with friends or
colleagues, but she was manning the decks on her own.

‘And what about the labelling abuse that goes on? Didn’t they find that a lot of organic food
isn’t
? I mean, who regulates these things, actually?’

I became aware of Geraint putting down his clipboard and standing, angling himself round, attempting to insinuate his bulk between the gap in the tables at the edge of the display. Liv put her
hand on his arm but he took no notice. A brief effort and he was out into the aisle and round the corner, out of sight. Then we heard him clear his throat.

‘It’s to do with
environmental impact
,’ he said.

‘Oh, here we go again,’ said the Boot.

But Geraint wasn’t daunted. This was his specialist subject, his area of expertise and passion. Great useless lollop he was in so many ways, but lectures like this are what he relishes.
Wind him up and off he goes, Welshly.

‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘how many types of butterfly are under
serious threat
? How many beetles and damselflies and bees? Nearly
two thousand
species we’re
on the brink of losing forever, invertebrates that we’ll never get back, that we depend on for pollination and to keep our natural ecology in place. A
third
of all bees and wasps! Do
you know how close we came in the Seventies to losing our otters and our birds of prey to organochlorines? Lindane and endosulfan were being used in this country
right up
until a couple of
years ago. Your pesticides and insecticides and fungicides and herbicides, what do you think happens to them after they’ve been laid down? Where do you think they go when it rains? You get
poison into the system and it hangs around, gets into our water, into the food chain, affects all kinds of animals and plants it was never intended for.
Twenty-five years
it can take for
dieldrin to break down, and you’d still be left with a residue. We’re still finding DDT and endrin in fish livers.’

The woman tried to speak, but he rumbled on over her, preacher-style.

‘Let me tell you, lady, about the harvest mouse. Those little creatures are so sensitive to chemicals, we lost a whole tankful of them when someone used fly killer in a closed office
two doors down the corridor
. Then there’s the animal welfare issue. Organic food
guarantees
your pig or your chicken or your sheep’s been raised free from cruelty. Never
mind free from hormones and routine antibiotics. Organic farms use fewer fossil fuels, too. They take less from the land all round. In fact, here’s a challenge. Next summer, on a hot day, you
walk round a farm where they don’t use pesticides and
you count up
the number of butterflies you see. Then go walk across a field that’s been sprayed. You’ll
see
the
difference.’

‘As if I’d have—’

‘And while we’re here, it’s been
scientifically proven
that organic milk is higher in Omega 3.’

‘My, aren’t you the expert,’ said the Boot nastily.

We waited for more, but it never came.

After about thirty seconds, Geraint appeared round the side of the stand clutching a flapjack and looking grimly pleased with himself.

‘Well done,’ said Liv.

I thought about adding my congratulations too, but decided they might sound fake, or worse, sarcastic. Besides, when I looked across, he was back on his GPS machine, head down, absorbed.

Instead I checked my aquarium. All the water creatures were busy exploring their world of plastic, shrimps circuiting in an endless quiver, nymphs shooting random trajectories, snails and
leeches creeping, creeping. The dragonfly larva patrolled, searching for something to attack.

‘Eew, is it a lizard? Is it alive?’ a girl of about ten was asking me. She banged on the side of the tank, sending the newts into a panic.

‘Don’t do that!’ I snapped, and she shrank back in surprise. I guess I must have sounded fiercer than I meant. Still, she needed to know. Sometimes I despair of humans.

‘I think,’ observed Liv, after the girl had moved on to healing crystals, ‘we might be due a break. Geraint’s got an appointment with a dormouse man in ten minutes, so do
you want to go first?’

I took myself off to the tea counter, then for a wander round the hall. I bought myself a pair of purple fingerless gloves and, on an impulse, a Celtic bracelet for Liv. I chatted to the couple
who run our local hedgehog rescue. As well as artists and wildlife folk, there were reps from the eco-coal place in Wrexham, Windtrap Turbines, Compost Awareness and Love Food Hate Waste. By the
time I was ready to go back, I had an armful of leaflets plus a special potato sack that prevents your spuds from sprouting prematurely.

I thought I’d go via the orange-plait-woman’s stall, see how she was doing. Trade was brisk, I was pleased to see; flapjacks were flying off the plates. She’d stuck felt bees
on wire so they floated above her jars of honey and jam, and her business card had a cartoon bee logo.
The Honey Bar
, I read. There was a row of customers in front of me so I couldn’t
get close enough to speak, but I gave the thumbs up, and she saw me and smiled.

Then, from the other side of the display boards, I detected Melody’s voice – no huge surprise as she’d said she would drop by with my birthday present – and I was just
going to walk round the corner and say hi when I heard Liv say the word ‘cancer’. There was something about her tone that made me think I shouldn’t interrupt. So I hung about in
the aisle, and pretended to study a selection of air purifiers. ‘Because I thought I’d never get to the end of it,’ she was saying. ‘Back in May, when I started chemo, it
felt like I was standing at the bottom of a great high mountain. The first session was the worst. You don’t know what to expect. Actually, it’s all ghastly. Trailing backwards and
forwards to hospital. And the chemo suite’s as cheerful as they can make it, the nurses are lovely, but it’s still a bit grim, how can it not be? Even though all you’re doing is
sitting around, it’s exhausting. Absolutely wipes you out.’

‘So seven down and five to go?’ said Melody. ‘You’re over the hump, then. The end’s in sight.’

‘It’s a wonderful thought. And yet – I know I should be grateful, get to spring and everything signed off.’

‘You’re not?’

Liv lowered her voice so I had to strain to hear. ‘When I think about the chemo finishing, I’m actually petrified.’

My heart cramped with panic. I heard Melody ask: ‘Is it because you don’t think they’ve totally zapped the bad stuff?’

There was a long, dreadful pause. Then, before she could reply, some idiot passer-by butted in to ask why they had to cut some of the trees down on the Moss. Liv was forced to explain about
encroachment and the need to balance habitats, and he wittered on about the old oak he used to play in as a kid. ‘Forests are the lungs of the planet,’ he kept saying.
Bugger
off
, I vibed at him.
Hope a tree falls on your head sometime
.

At last he moved on, and after a few moments I heard her go, ‘Yes, the chemo’s vile, but when it’s finished, where does that leave me? It’s the idea that I’ll be on
my own. While you’re having chemo, you’re being treated and there’s a structure to the weeks and you’ve something positive to battle against. It’s horrible but
it’s also reassuring, if that makes any sense.’

‘They’ll keep a close eye on you after, though,’ said Melody.

‘Oh, they will. I’ll have regular scans. The slightest concern, I can go back and see the consultant. I’ll actually be safer than someone who’s never been ill.
They’ve stressed that. I know I’m being silly.’

‘No you’re not. Jesus, I’d be bricking it, anyone would. For what it’s worth, I think you’ve been incredibly cool about everything. Cancer – well, it’s
shit.’

‘But once you overcome that initial shock you find yourself just getting on with things. You can’t carry on being stunned forever. And also, I think you surprise yourself, what you
can cope with when it comes down to it. Cancer’s one of those things no one else can go through for you. People can wave encouragement from the sidelines, but really, you’re on your
own.’

‘Like losing a baby.’

‘Yes. It has been a bloody awful year, hasn’t it?’

Another silence followed, the kind that suggests there’s really nothing more to say on a particular topic, or that words won’t do it justice, or that perhaps two women have, for a
second or two, touched a level of understanding they’ve never reached before. I’d have put down my air purifier and walked round the corner at this point, except Liv suddenly went,
‘Freya’s been good.’

I froze.

‘She’s so helpful round the house,’ she went on. ‘Does nearly all the cleaning, a lot of the cooking; she’s run me to hospital, even held the bowl while I was sick.
She’s been like a nurse. I never have to worry about whether the washing’ll get done, or if we’ll run out of milk or bread. She just gets on and sorts it. I don’t know how
I’d have managed without her. Geraint’s a love but he never thinks about details like that.’

‘You’re telling me!’ I said aloud. The man on the purifier stall looked up.

‘Yeah,’ said Melody. ‘She was a support to me at the funeral. I really appreciated it. Michael did, too. ’Cause it can’t have been easy, but it meant a lot. Thing
is, Freya might not be one of these high-flyers but she is grounded, and in a shitty world that counts for a lot. You’ve, you know, done a decent job with her.’

‘Well. It’s not all been plain sailing,’ said Liv.

‘You’ve done a sight better than I could. Two babies I’ve had, and I couldn’t keep either. I’m obviously not meant to be a mother.’

‘But you are a mother.’

‘Maybe a semi-detached kind of one.’

‘Isn’t that what all mums become in the end? If we’ve done the job right. I sometimes wonder with Frey, I think you might be better at treating her . . . I’ve found it
hard—’

Something clattered to the floor; Melody made noises of concern.

Liv: ‘No, no, I’m not upset. Not at all. There’s a hanky in my bag.’

The blood was thudding in my ears.

‘Do you need any help?’ said the purifier man.

I turned away from him and put my hands to my temples. Over the roar of my emotions I heard someone new asking about reports of a great grey shrike on the heath. My face desperately needed a
splash of cold water and I’d have taken myself there and then to the toilets, if I hadn’t heard another voice I recognised slicing across all other conversations.

‘Oh, so
you’re
one of these newt fanatics?’

It was the woman who’d held forth on organic farming earlier, the woman Geraint had swept in and so neatly demolished, like a tractor running over a sapling. Only as far as I knew, Geraint
wasn’t on the scene right now, he was off bothering dormice.

There was no time to hang about. I left the purifiers and scooted round the corner. Standing in front of our stall was a lumpy matron of about fifty encased in an ankle-length Barbour and Dublin
riding boots. Her hair was frizzy and her complexion rough, but that accent was cut glass.

‘Do you know what I’ve been told to do with my OWN land?’ she demanded, bristling. Liv just stared at her. ‘I’ve had to put up plastic bloody fences. Right across
the side of the top field, along both sides of the driveway, in case someone should drive over one of these bloody newts and squash them. Supposedly rare – hah! How can they be
“threatened” when there are dozens living in our cellar? I’ll tell you, it’s European jobsworths inventing directives for the hell of it. Picking on farmers, because farmers
don’t count, even though we stock your larders for you. I can’t build my extension because I’m not allowed to drain my pond, and never mind the barn is bloody well sinking into
the mire. Oh no, that doesn’t matter. People don’t matter, do they? Not to you lot. Thousands, it’s going to cost me. Bloody Green lobby, poking about where you’re not
wanted. Wading up and down with your long nets. Whose land is it? Eh? Eh?’