“That bastard,” she said, finally. “He’s sold us out to them!”
“So it would seem,” Jean agreed. She picked up Alex’s plate and stuck it in the sink. “Go wash your hands and then report to the man outside. He’ll keep you busy until lunchtime.”
Alex nodded and obeyed. The next three hours were an education. She’d never realised how much had to be done each day on a farm, from mucking out the pigs — who eyed her with disconcerting eyes — to rubbing down the horses. Smith explained that they also made money by renting out their horses to a nearby riding school, which had ties to a college for young ladies that specialised in turning their brains into mush. Alex had never thought much about horses, but it seemed that the young girls honestly had no idea how to treat them when they finally got to ride on their backs. Some of the horses were very docile, even with young and inexperienced riders; others seemed nasty, including a big black horse that eyed her balefully.
“Stalin there won’t allow himself to be ridden,” Smith commented. Somehow, Alex found it difficult to turn her back on the horse. Stalin — a play on words, she realised after a moment — seemed to be waiting for a moment to kick her or trample her into the ground. “Someone treated him very badly, poor thing, and he’s been good for nothing apart from breeding ever since. A couple of people have tried to ride him and always come off worst.”
“I’m surprised he wasn’t put down,” Alex said. Horses… but then, jet aircraft could be temperamental too. Too many missions had had to be aborted because multimillion pounds worth of equipment had failed at the wrong time. “Isn’t he a danger to everyone?”
“No kids around here,” Smith said, “and the wife and I know better than to relax around him.”
He shrugged. “After lunch, do you want to go see old Nathan Archer? He was saying that there’s something he wants you to see. The Parish Council meeting last night rather impressed him.”
Alex looked at him, sideways. “Should I go?”
Smith snorted. “Nathan’s a harmless old man,” he said. “He used to run a large farm, but much of it got sold off in the seventies, leaving him with just a couple of fields. His wife died years ago and his kids never visit. I think he’d be glad of the company.”
“I’ll go then,” Alex decided. “Are we going to have lunch now?”
“Hungry?” Smith asked. He laughed. “I hear the same from everyone who stays here — and no, it isn’t lunchtime yet. We’ve barely begun to work.”
He was still chuckling as they walked over to the field. “But you’re not doing too badly, not like some of the visitors,” he added. “We’ll make a farmer out of you yet.”
Nathan Archer’s farmhouse looked older than Smith’s farmhouse, although Alex wasn’t entirely sure why she had that impression. It was a long low building, with a large door and roses growing up the side of the house. Most of the windows looked too small for their positions, almost like portholes in the side of a ship. A pair of heavy axes had been nailed above the doors, reminding her of some of the decorations she’d seen in Afghanistan. They looked securely fashioned, but she nipped under them as quickly as possible. She tapped on the door and waited. It was several minutes before Archer opened the door and peered out at her.
“Welcome to my home,” he said. His accent was more rustic than Smith’s accent, suggesting that he didn’t spend much time watching the television. “Did you come alone?”
Alex tensed at the question, despite the pistol concealed within her jacket. “Yes,” she said, finally. “I only told Farmer Smith where I was going…”
“Smith can keep a secret,” Archer said. He picked up a stick, closed the door and hobbled out around the house. Alex heard the sound of dogs barking as they rounded the house and came up to a small fence marking out the rear garden. A small army of dogs were yapping away, some large enough to make her glad that she was carrying the pistol. She didn’t recognise half of the breeds, but then she’d never been a dog fancier. Cats were far less trouble to keep. “Down boys, now!”
Alex watched in some amazement as the dogs sat down, their tongues lolling out of their mouths as if they were exhausted. “I used to be able to take them for walks every day,” Archer explained, “but I can’t do that now and I can’t bear to give them away. I just have to let them have the run of the garden and hope that they don’t make too much of a mess.”
He led her over towards a barn, standing alone in the middle of a field. “I was a young farmer of nineteen when the war started,” he said. Alex took a sharp look at him, realising that he was talking about the Second World War — just like the person she’d met at the Parish Council. That would make him over ninety years old, surely. “I volunteered for service at once, only to be told that I was in an essential occupation. The young men of the parish called me coward as they marched away and I bloodied my fists on many of their faces.”
His mouth opened in a crooked smile. “We were all so much more vital back then,” he added. “None of this self-obsessed whining of the modern generation — we worked, we knew where we stood, we knew that we were responsible for ourselves. And there was no embarrassment over fighting to defend our country from the Hun. A quarter of the map was coloured pink and we loved it. All those whiners who say we shouldn’t have had an empire never understood what it was like to have pride. Now, no one has any loyalty to their country.
“But I’d registered when I’d volunteered and they found a job for me,” he said. “Everyone knew that it was just a matter of time before that little German Corporal led his dragoons over to England. They started preparing for war — for a war that would still continue even if the Germans occupied London and banished the King to Canada. And farmers like me were given a secret role to play when the Germans had defeated the army and believed themselves secure.”
They reached the barn. Archer pulled an old set of keys out of his pocket and opened the padlock, pushing the doors open wide enough to allow light to stream into the confined spaces. It was empty, the floor covered with decaying straw and pieces of animal waste. Alex wrinkled her nose at the smell, before Archer pushed her to one side and started digging through the piles of straw. It struck her that something was concealed under the barn, something that might have lain in hiding for a very long time…
“They told us to keep it safe,” Archer said. There was a click as he found a hidden board of wood in the floor and pulled it up. A few moments of struggling revealed a hatch neatly hidden, one that he had problems lifting alone. Alex walked over and helped him to pull the hatch all the way up, revealing a darkened space under the barn. Archer pulled out a small electric torch and shone it down into the darkness, revealing a number of bundles that looked as if they hadn’t been touched for years. “First there was the Nazis, and then there were the Communists — oh yes, we were worried about them. I always believed that they would come and recover the dump’s contents, but the government never bothered to come pick it up.”
Alex stared at him, and then back down into the chamber. “How long has this been here?”
“Some of it has been here since 1940,” Archer said, with some pride. “We had some changed during 1944 when we got new equipment from America — and some more got changed during the 1950s. And then the officials stopped visiting and we just kept on taking care of it. And it has never been touched.”