By the end of the summer, the recession began to subside. On the roof of a neighboring office, a crane appeared. Drunk, one Sunday, watched by all his housemates, Don decided to leap across the small gap between the roofs and climb it. At the top, by the driver’s seat, he found bottles of Celtic Spring mineral water, filled with piss in different shades of dehydration. He wanted to yell, “The heart of the capitalist dream,” but didn’t. Instead he “noticed his desire” to. At that time, he was into noticing his emotions.
By autumn, the surrounding office blocks were nearly full: ergonomic shoemakers, licensed taxis, and a life-science industry magazine called Research? Research! They had grown too used to feeling that the building was their own, and their neighbors, people with real jobs, didn’t like walking past on a lunch break and seeing shutters rattle up on a tableau of dropouts in bathrobes. One morning, Ash turned up with two big blokes from the council.
After they got served their month’s notice, Don made one of his speeches. Except at that point he didn’t make speeches, so it just seemed impromptu and genuine. He said they had two choices: either return to the familiar, piss-drinking drudge of city life or run with the summer’s energy, the shared skills, the collective joblessness, their youngness, and try a different life, in the countryside. That’s all he called it. The countryside. “The city will still be here, waiting to eat us up, the moment we want to come back.”
This speech was not a surprise to Freya. She and Don had already talked at length about it—had even discussed how best to pitch it to their housemates and how best to hide it from Alana, whom no one liked. But Freya played along, pretending to be struck, right then, by the idea’s ripeness.
“I’m ready,” she said, standing up. “Who else is with us?”
Out of seven of them, only Arlo stayed seated. A few weeks later, they heard he’d won a scholarship to work as a pâtissier in New York. Not only that but it was with his culinary hero, a legendary Austrian chef with an empire of restaurants and his own range of implements, including a signature veal mallet.
They spent the next couple of weeks doing road trips in two cars—one Chris’s, the other Li’s—searching for an appropriate property. They went to Yorkshire, Northumberland, Dumfriesshire, Mid Wales, North Wales, South Wales—anywhere that was cheap. In North Gower they found a building that was previously a parish school, a single classroom its best feature, and a run-down cottage attached. It sat on unpromising-looking farmland on the gloomy west side of The Bulwark with an almost-fantastic view of Rhossili beach if it weren’t for the downs in the way. But it was undeniably cheap, and the farmer who was selling it, in a charming reverse of their other experiences, did not hide his desperation to get rid of it. He said: “I’m desperate to get rid.” He had tremendous visible capillaries in his nose. His only attempt at spin was when he referred to the Gower peninsula’s “microclimate.”
After showing them the house, he walked with them to the top of The Bulwark, which rose up behind the farm. From there they could see north, the Loughor Estuary; west, Worm’s Head pointing out to the Irish Sea; south, the Bristol Channel and the cliffs of Devon beyond. To the east was Swansea and industry and that which they were trying to escape. For Don, to whom such things were important, a peninsula had the right implications: something that pushed out from the mainland, making an insular path into the unknown.
Patrick—now at the peak of his love for Janet—paid the deposit. They got a joint mortgage that named Patrick, Freya, Janet, Li, Perry, Chris, and Don as tenants-in-common, dividing up proportions of ownership, and therefore of repayment, according to what each person could afford. At the same time, Patrick had a solicitor draw up a declaration of trust that, in an act of clear distrust, committed each person to pay a little each month, beyond their share of the mortgage, to reimburse his deposit. He was happy to see his experience as a landowner coming in useful and he set up a sinking fund and bought comprehensive insurance. In October they moved in, when the only space with a fully functioning roof was the schoolroom, so that’s where they slept. It was lucky that London had got them used to living in close quarters. They brought their gas stoves and favored slow-cooked stews and curries because they radiated more heat into the room. They had not expected snow on the beach by Christmas.
During that first winter, they worked on pinning down the project’s details, from breeds of unusual vegetable the microclimate would support—breadnut, gumbo, black salsify—to the stepped permaculture garden; the badminton green; an Aylesbury drake and six ducks; the yurt village; a Gloucester Old Spot pig; radicchio, garbanzo, cowpea; their right to a lobster pot at Broughton; and fully off-grid power: hydro, solar, wind, and car batteries concealed in beehives.
By spring, they’d lost two members: Li, who said the damp was making her ill, and Perry the scriptwriter, who’d gone to live with his parents and write a feature-length script about life in a commune. With seven people living in one room, privacy was hard to find. Everyone knew how Patrick felt about Janet and they watched to see if she would capitulate. With no TV, they became the soap opera.
Their numbers swelled as the weather got better, and under Chris’s supervision they got to work on repairing the house and outbuildings. The stairs were rotted in a slapstick way and they used a wood-fired, steam-powered log saw, Chris’s pride and joy, to cut planks. The gas-fed Rayburn oven, which they had assumed was ruined, awoke from hibernation, a roar of flames in its stomach. The house and gardens were in such a state that hour by hour the impact was dramatic. After a day with scythes and machetes, clearing brush, nettles, brambles, and weeds, they could celebrate around a victory bonfire. The whole first year, in fact, was characterized by this sensation of making big steps.
Official meetings were, and remained, on Thursday mornings, at first weekly and later fortnightly. They were chaired by a different member each time until they realized it was easier to allow Don to be permanent chair than it was to try to control his contributions. One of his earliest suggestions was to change the name of the farm to Welsh. Don expressed his support of the Meibion Glyndwr movement—a then still-active group who had been firebombing English-owned vacation homes on Anglesey and the Llyn peninsula. He said the Anglophone destruction of Welsh culture was unforgivable. To watch Don pronounce Meibion Glyndwr was to see a man battle his own genetics.
“Good on ’em, I say,” said Don, whose family was English, but who had a dram of Scots blood somewhere way back in his ancestry.
“I’m sure they’re relieved to have your support,” said Patrick, who was, with his Welsh mother, the only one among them who could claim to be returning to the motherland.
They bought an English–Welsh dictionary and set about trying to mash together the two words that best captured their geographical location, since Welsh house names tended to be purely descriptive: “house on triangular piece of land,” for instance. There followed a fortnight of grueling discussion, long lists, short lists, blind voting, and, each day, the sound of people absently repeating different combinations of words—Ty Nant, Cwm Mawr, Trem Coed, Treffoel, Dolclogwyn—to gauge how they felt in the mouth.
Blaen meant “extremity” and “beginning,” both of which, Don felt, said something about their reasons for being there. It also referred to a place at the head of a valley. They were at the side of an almost-valley. And Llyn, meaning “lake” or “pool,” referenced the swimmable section of river in the woods. All that first winter they had talked about how they would bathe and picnic there, in much the same way that people buying more suburban homes visualize barbecues they will never have. Don liked the name for its challenging consonant and forbidding stand-alone extra vowel. Blaen-y-Llyn was a mark of their early commitment to the language and would subsequently be a reminder that some of the grown-ups never moved beyond a toddler’s conversational Welsh.
The first animal they bought was a Gloucester Old Spot called Hog. They gave him that name to avoid too strong an emotional attachment, since they
planned to fatten and kill him. Hog had different ideas, making himself indispensable by becoming the community’s premier cultivator of previously unworkable scrubland; pretty much the entirety of what was now the market garden was first dug up, and shat on, by him. Only when there was no more uncultivated land left for Herzog (as Don took to calling him) did they decide to eat him. Don picked the short straw to see who would wield the .22 rifle they’d borrowed from a neighboring farm.
The night before the slaughter, while julienning spring onions, he took the lid off his trigger finger. Much bleeding and, some people felt, affected swearing followed. Hamming it up, appropriately. He said he was gutted but it compromised his marksmanship, though he was still happy to supervise. Another round of straws was pulled.
Werner was eating scraps from a bucket when Freya shot him in the brain. Don, trying to help, fell to his knees and pinned the pig on its side, wrestling-style, while she cut the artery in its neck. Then, as research had said it would, the pig appeared to come back to life, a nerve response causing the body to buck and the legs to kick. Werner was big, bigger than the man pinning him down, and as Don scrabbled to get up, he took a hoof to the ribs.
For six days, Don walked slowly up and down steps and made elongated sighing noises when getting in and out of chairs. He also took any opportunity to mythologize his wife’s role: her calm manner, perfect aim, but underlying humanity. As a result, it was suggested that Freya be the first person in the community to apply for a firearms license, and once she had that, her fate was sealed. She was the executioner. Don was never asked to help again, but still, he ate bacon with an air of moral immunity.
After two years, Arlo came back. So the story goes, the legendary Austrian chef had visited the kitchen to decide who of the trainees to keep on full-time. He had complimented Arlo, who, at the end of a long shift, held back tears of awed happiness, flushed red from head to toe, and felt his skin grow clammy. They shook hands. The next day the message was passed back that Arlo “did not have the palms” for pastry.
Nobody has ever found out where Arlo went for the intervening years. He arrived on New Year’s Day, walking up the frozen lane with a roll of Japanese knives under his arm instead of a sleeping bag. By then he had the kind of beard that was unacceptable in a professional kitchen. He had no gloves and his hands were blue.
When the big house was finally habitable, they had a grand-opening party. Don chose this day to announce that Freya was twelve weeks pregnant. This boosted morale, and kick-started new projects. Don, Patrick, and Janet set to work on building the workshop. Chris, Arlo, and Freya oversaw the creation of a market garden and finally bought books on permaculture.
Twenty-six weeks later, Freya staggered into the schoolroom, sumo-stance, hair tied back, breathing like a weight lifter, trailed by a midwife and her trainee in squared-off navy pinafores. Kate Bronwyn Riley (or Bronwyn Kate Riley, as she would have been called, had Don got his way) was twelve days early. When Don had left that morning—to collect a trunkload of baby clothes, books, toys, and a cot from a like-minded community in Somerset—he kissed Freya and whispered into her belly button: “Don’t even think about it.”
He was lucky that the news got through to him at all. In Somerset, the phone rang in the Mongolian-style meetinghouse and, by chance, he was nearby. Speeding back through narrow lanes, he beeped his horn at blind bends, biting his tongue, onto the motorway, dominating the fast lane, his aura of necessity, sweeping cars aside with a flash of his headlights. A part of him was relieved that his role in the birth was so clearly defined. All you have to do is go as fast as you can. And he secretly hoped to hear the newborn wail of a police siren behind him, to be pulled over, to speak to the officer in candid terms, share a desperate play on words—“I’m sorry I broke the speed limit, but my wife’s water just broke”—and be back on the road with the officer’s best wishes, having crashed through the fourth wall between government and citizen. In truth, the race was all but over by the time he crossed the Severn bridge, but they had no way of letting him know, so he powered onward, kept the split-screen narrative going, drawing parallels between the engine’s straining, pushing, sweating beneath the hood, and his wife—as he visualized her—screaming: “Where the fuck is Don? I need him here now!”
When his car came skidding into the yard it was dark, and entering the hall he knew by Patrick’s hair, which was swept across unevenly in the manner of someone who has been involved in something major, that he had missed it. Freya and Kate were both asleep and Don had to accept that his biggest role in proceedings would be to feed the placenta to the goats. He listened to them chew.
Patrick had been in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time and had tried his best to help Freya, even—in a moment of uncharacteristic boldness—nodding when she asked him if he wanted to cut the umbilical cord. He can remember its gristly texture, the resistance first, then the give. If he had moments of feeling unsure about his place in the community, of whether he was there for the right reasons, it was then that he felt tied in.
3. TREATMENT
Saturday
“Dad, time to arise.”
“Mmm.”
“Open your eyes.”
“What time is it?”
“Late. Terribly late.”
“What time exactly?”
“Nearly double figures.”
“Albert, your father’s tired.”
“Your wife has been awake for hours.”
“Okay.”
“You said you’d let me try on the Soviet Hat.”
“Did I?”
“Last night while we were in the woods, you promised.”
“I think we’re going to see Uncle Patrick in hospital today. Why don’t you write him a nice get-well card?”
Kate was in the waiting room. Her father had given her one of the community’s two mobile phones. Thirty-six unread messages and sixty missed calls. The calls dated back to the previous summer. The messages were mostly from unknown numbers trying to contact people who had left months ago.
Friends, this is Nova—the “Finn with the Grin”! Now in Mumbai—working for an NGO. If you want to visit, my floor’s comfortable! ;-) Miss you!
Don’t know if Jake’s still there—but if he is: PENBLWYDD HAPUS I TI, CARIAD! Dan x
Frey, hope you’re feeling better. Sorry to hear things have been difficult. If you want to talk—I’m here. Be brave. xx
Solstice Approacheth! Swiss Andy here. Best wishes from La Senda, intentional community in Santiago de la Compostela, Spain. Thinking of you all, and of Arlo’s paella (better than here!!) Ax
The message that had just come in read:
Morning K, we all very eager to visit PAT. Call me as soon as you can. V proud of you. Love DAD
• • •
They had erected a bear-hugger around Patrick—a kind of paper duvet—into which they blew hot air with a fan. They fed him warm fluids, injected directly through the stomach wall and with two IVs, one in each arm. He was given oxygen while student doctors watched. He could not remember the last time he felt so cared for. The focus of years of study! Monitored by four machines!
“What makes Patrick a priority?” the doctor asked.
One of the students, a small girl with dedicated eyebrows, stepped forward.
“Here,” she said, pointing. “The skin over his ankle is dying.”
When he woke again, in the ward, hours later, he had metal scaffolding built around his ankle with struts that joined on to plates in his bones. His foot was bandaged and raised above the bed, held in a blue sling. The TV hovered in the air above him, held by a metal arm. He looked around confused, then, recognizing Kate sitting beside him, relaxed a little. She took his hand and squeezed it.
It didn’t take long for a nurse to arrive with a tray: a glass of lemonade, a straw, and a plate covered with a plastic dome. “Luncheon, sire,” she said, and pulled the lid off with a flourish. Patrick watched the cloud of steam rise up and spre
ad out across the low ceiling. Cod in parsley sauce, mash, peas. She bowed and walked out. He stared at the colorful food for a while, then tried the lemonade.
“Patrick, I’m so sorry. Do you remember what happened?”
His voice was muted and coming from his throat. “Some.”
“I came with you in the ambulance. The others will be here soon.”
He sucked the straw until it rasped. “When?” he said, treble returning to his voice, looking more awake now. His leg shifted in its sling.
“They’ll visit this afternoon.”
“When?” He tried to sit up but couldn’t. He looked around for a clock.
“It’s one-fifteen now. They’ll be here about three.”
“No,” he said, louder. His hands pushed against the sheets, but he couldn’t prop himself up. He made a low growl as he struggled.
“What’s wrong? Don’t get agitated.”
“Tell them not to come,” he said, gripping the bed’s metal safety bars, his head turning this way and that, his voice spiking, mucus rattling in his chest.
“They’re your friends, Patrick. They’re worried about you.”
He clawed at the tubes on his wrist, trying to peel off the surgical tape.
“I’ll get someone.” Kate stood up.
“Hoh,” he yelled, sounding like a tennis umpire, his slung leg swinging as he knocked the tray of food off his bed, the plastic plate clattering, the bladeless knife and a snot of mushy peas on the linoleum, the cod fillet sliding into the gangway.