Tom had watched the spread of Abbey Vineyards beside him with interest — farmers are conservative folk, and a completely new use of land always seems more risky to them than to anyone else. That interest changed first into a vague feeling of unease; this was rapidly followed by the outright apprehension which a small landowner always feels with the spread of a bigger and more prosperous neighbour. Yet Ogden had been glad to sell the highest and least productive part of his land to Martin Beaumont in the early days of the vineyard. The money had enabled Tom to convert the fertile lowland area of his farm to intensive cultivation. He had opted for a new life of his own which to him seemed quite daring enough.
Tom Ogden was now a strawberry farmer, with long rows of plastic cloches stretching away across his fields and an influx of foreign pickers at the height of the season. Both of these developments had brought opposition from different sectors of the local population. This opposition had been accorded full voice in the Gloucester Citizen, which had many pages to fill each evening and was delighted to fan local controversy. The issue had then been taken up by local radio, and had even featured on Central Television news. Tom Ogden had been uncomfortable in the face of such publicity, but had affected to treat it with the sturdy indifference farmers customarily accorded to aesthetes and townies.
Tom now had half his fields converted to the increasingly popular ‘Pick Your Own’ option for his strawberries. People came out from the towns and villages of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to pick his produce, often treating the expedition as a family outing. They had caused a little damage at first with their clumsy fingers and clumsier feet, but Tom had soon learned to limit that. The important thing was that they paid almost as much for his strawberries as the retail price in the shops, and far more than he could get from the markets or supermarkets. Children in particular tended to eat energetically whilst they picked, but Tom treated that as a necessary but minor evil, to be set against the lower overheads of selling on site. He was delighted with his profits, whilst his customers enjoyed the warm glow brought by physical exertion and then the flavour of strawberries which could not have been fresher.
On this bright April day, Tom Ogden was looking over the bent backs of his workers, as they weeded the rows and nourished the promising green fruits with a little fertilizer. He imagined the summer scene here, when he would be listening to children’s shrill cries to their parents, and congratulating himself on taking what had seemed an adventurous step into this new area of farming.
Ogden went out into the field and exchanged a few words with ‘Spot’ Wheeler, his foreman. No one, not even the man himself, was sure how he had acquired his soubriquet. He was Henry on his birth certificate, but he had answered to Spot for so long that no one knew any other forename for him. Spot had rarely ventured outside Herefordshire and had an accent far stronger than even Tom’s very noticeable one, so that any Englishman from more than fifty miles away found his speech difficult to follow. Yet, in some strange combination of sign and sound argot, which perhaps even he could not have explained, Spot managed to communicate effectively with the variety of mainly Eastern European workers who came each year to work in the strawberry fields.
Tom Ogden always enjoyed talking to Spot, feeling an affinity with a man who had the same roots as he had, whose family had worked the land as his had for hundreds of years. Though neither of them would have acknowledged it or voiced it, the bond between them was sealed by a sense of rank. Spot Wheeler accepted his lower station as labourer and now supervisor of labour as unthinkingly as Tom accepted his role as owner of the land and thus master of his workers’ destiny.
Spot gave his employer a brief report on the progress of cultivation and directed two of his newest workers to a new area with a series of guttural sounds; they nodded and bent anew to their work with the forks. Tom scratched his head, then shook it once again in happy wonderment at his foreman’s ability to communicate with his workforce.
It was at that moment that a cloud fell across his world. It was a metaphorical cloud, for the day was golden still with a steady sun, but a cloud nonetheless. Spot Wheeler said suddenly, ‘That chap be ’ere again, Mr Ogden,’ and Tom turned to see a figure outlined against the sun at the entrance to his fields. It looked to him for a moment like some great bird of prey, black and ominous against the sky.
‘I don’t know why. I’ve told him often enough there’s nothing for him here,’ said Ogden, turning his steps reluctantly towards the interloper.
‘Wonderful day, Tom!’ said Martin Beaumont, when Ogden got within ten yards of him. He forced the farmer to fall into step with him, turning his path along the edge of the strawberry fields. Tom had been intending to lead him quickly back to the exit and his car. ‘At least the sun and this southerly wind are fine for vineyards. I expect you’d like a little more rain to swell your strawberries. Temperamental crop, I believe. I shouldn’t like to rely on them for a living.’
Ogden resisted the farmer’s temptation to agree about the weather. It was one of the modern jokes that no season was ever exactly right for the farmer, but he did not wish to agree anything with this man. He said gruffly, ‘Nothing like as temperamental as vines, I should think.’
‘Oh, they’re much less difficult than most people imagine, once you get the hang of viniculture. Everyone else is moaning about global warning, but it’s helping us. And we’ve diversified as we’ve developed, you see, Tom. We’ve got quite a variety of grapes now, so that something’s pretty well bound to do well, even in a difficult season. One of the secrets of success in the agricultural industry, diversification. Now that I’ve got used to diversity, I shouldn’t like to be dependent on a single crop for my livelihood.’ He looked sideways over the long rows of plastic cloches and the bent backs of workers in the open areas beyond them. ‘Must be pretty labour-intensive, strawberries. Not a good thing, nowadays, with men likely to let you down the moment they get a better offer.’
‘We’ve got autumn raspberries as well as strawberries. And I don’t have difficulties with labour. The recession’s made people glad of a job. It’s true it was difficult to get workers, a couple of years ago, but I can pick and choose a bit now.’
‘Really?’ Beaumont let his elaborate surprise slide into a grin. ‘Better not let the Citizen know that, eh, Tom? They’ll be saying you should get rid of these cheap-labour foreigners and employ local labour!’
‘If they do, I’ll know where their information’s come from, won’t I?’
Beaumont made an elaborate show of looking hurt. ‘Oh, it wouldn’t be me, Tom. I’m your friendly neighbour, aren’t I? But there are always plenty of people ready to make trouble for us chaps who provide the work, aren’t there?’
‘These men work hard all day and earn their money. I’ve no complaints about them.’
‘I’ll bet you haven’t. Slave labour without union rates. We’d all like a bit of that!’
‘They’re not slaves and they’re properly paid. It’s none of your business, anyway, Beaumont.’
‘Could be, Tom. Could be. In a roundabout sort of way, of course. I’m still willing to pay a good price for your land, you see. Should be music in your ears, that, with the worst recession for eighty years gathering pace, and the price of agricultural land steadily dropping.’
‘The recession’s helping my business. More people are prepared to pick their own, in a recession.’ Tom felt himself being drawn into an argument he had never intended to have.
‘You’d get a higher price from me than from anyone else, Tom. You’re lucky in that your land would fit neatly into my estate, as I’ve explained to you before. Our vineyards could span the valley nicely, if we took this little tongue of land in, so I’m still prepared to offer you the price I offered last year. That might not be the case for much longer, though.’