‘Happened to Tony.’
‘Happened to Chris, and all.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Wanker.’
The farmer was a bastard, then. Like most others, they all agreed, but this one particularly because he had won the Lottery when he was already a millionaire. He was a lucky bastard. Euromillions. Or a scratch card.
Cathy and I were like grey standing-stones at the border of their coven. They mainly ignored us. We stood at the edge of the car park, a little way away from their cluster in the middle but close enough to hear. We had brought a flask of hot coffee. I sipped it out of a white and blue enamel mug while Cathy drank from the lid.
Potato-sifting at Sunrise Farm. That was the job today and the van would be here soon to pick us up. Give us a lift. Drop us off. Pick us up again when the day was done. Drop us back here.
Cathy was nervous. I could tell from the way she gripped the flask lid. I could tell from the way her thin and translucent eyelids blinked against the cool air. Her eyes were sensitive like her skin and could not stand the cold. They were especially sensitive when she was scared. When something worried her she kept them wide against it, whatever it was, so as to see it coming at her then to see it off. Today, fear coursed through her like a hare through wheat stubble. I could tell. She bristled.
I was afraid, just the same. Sunrise was farmed by this millionaire lottery-winner and his name was Coxswain. It was the same Coxswain that Daddy had seen to for Peter’s money. The money he had been owed. It was Coxswain who Daddy had nearly killed outside the back-room betting shop. Coxswain was one of Price’s friends. It was Price’s land like all the land around here and Coxswain held it, ran the farm, worked the labourers hard for a tenner a day and dobbed them in to the dole office if they complained.
Cathy and I were here to see what was what. Those were the instructions Daddy had given us. It had been Ewart’s suggestion.
We were to look at the farm and chat to some of the workers to find out what we could about Coxswain. If we could discover something about Mr Price, so much the better, though Daddy doubted there would be any chat about him. The men who worked on these farms did not know who owned the land or who managed the managers or what the turnover was like or what proportion of profit got translated into their wages. They sorted the potatoes, got paid and sometimes they went down to the pub or corner-shop and bought a packet of cigarettes.
We had almost finished the flask of coffee when the van arrived. Cathy took my mug away and tossed the dregs aside. She put it into her bag with the flask and our lunchtime sandwiches.
A man with a clipboard and a spongy pewter moustache climbed out of the driver’s seat. The men and Cathy and I walked slowly towards him and huddled around. Hands were in pockets and jackets were zipped as far up as they could be zipped. The man made a note of each name before its owner climbed into the back of the van.
The foreman spotted my sister and me. ‘What’s this?’
Cathy stepped forward, prepared. ‘We’re here to work. Same as everyone else.’
‘How old are you?’
Cathy shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’ she said.
‘I asked, dindt I? How old are you?’
‘Eighteen,’ she lied. ‘And he’s sixteen.’
‘He’s your little boyfriend, is he?’ said the man, obtusely.
‘Brother.’
‘How did you hear about meeting place?’
She shrugged again but the man did not seem too fussed by the rudeness. ‘Same as everyone,’ she said. ‘Someone told us. Someone said go down to WMC of a morning if you want to earn a bit of money. So that’s what we did.’
‘Who’s your dad?’
‘Sam Jones. Do you know him?’
It was a common enough name. I was not sure if it was someone she knew of or if she had pulled it from thin air there and then.
‘Never heard of him. Do you know any of this lot to vouch for you?’ He nodded at the men already sitting in the van and those still standing in the car park.
‘We heard you were short of hands this year so we thought we’d come down and try our luck.’
The foreman stopped to consider. He blinked a couple of times. His eyelashes were as grey and as coarse as his moustache. ‘That’s true enough. We do need some extra. Are you up to it?’
Cathy shrugged.
‘It’s hard work. Bending and lifting all—’
‘Not that hard,’ interrupted Cathy. ‘We’ve sorted potatoes before. And picked them. And carried great big sacks of them. It’s no problem. We worked on a farm near Grimsby where we did potatoes and sugar beets and all that.’
‘Grimsby? What the fuck were you doing over there then and being here now? You a pair of fucking gypos?’
‘Our nan lived over there. We used to live with her. Now we live with our dad.’
‘Your dad, Sam Jones?’
‘Aye.’
He did not believe us but he let us on the bus all the same.
The last of the men in the car park were marshalled onto the van and they found their places among those that were already inside. The seats were coated in a sticky fabric that was pretending to be leather. There were gashes in some and seat-padding was spilling out. Some gashes had been made deliberately. They had been cleanly slashed by a bored and frustrated labourer who had sunk the blade of his penknife into the soft cushion rather than into the taut muscles of his own thigh. Most of the holes were from wear.
The foreman had left the engine running and the radiator on. It was gorgeously warm. The windows had steamed up so the cold world outside looked like it was shrouded in a close fog. I made my mark with my finger. I traced a single line of about six inches across at the height of my eyes like the thin slit in a knight’s helmet. I looked out through my visor. My nose pressed on the glass made a further mark in the damp glaze.
The van was not half full and Cathy and I were the only two people sitting next to one another. All of the men had chosen a pair of seats for themselves so they could spread themselves out with an arm up on the neighbouring headrest or their coat or bag between them and the aisle. They all appeared to know each other quite well but they protected their individual space nevertheless.
A man sat in the row directly in front of us. He was wearing a black beanie hat and a bomber jacket that was more British racing green than military green. When the doors were shut and the driver had got going, the man took off his outer clothes. Beneath his hat he had a shaved head and on the back of his neck a tattoo of a word or phrase written in a gothic script so dense I could not make out the letters. Beneath his jacket he wore a white vest. He bore the signs of a thin man who had worked hard to build himself up. His muscles rested uneasily on his bones.
As he arranged himself in his seat he noticed me looking. He turned and used the window as his back-rest so that he could face us and talk.
‘Not seen you two before.’
‘Needed money,’ said Cathy.
‘Aye, don’t we all.’
He had brought an apple with him and began shining it on his trouser leg like a cricket ball. He then raised it to his mouth and took a bite, cleaving a quarter of the apple’s flesh with a loud crack. He chewed what he had bitten off and swallowed the mouthful before turning back to us.
‘You must have got desperate if you’ve come up to work with us lot,’ he pointed out.