The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn

Author:Raynor Winn [Winn, Raynor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241401484
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2020-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

17. Land

‘I don’t know why you’re asking me, my phone’s only for texts and calls, how would I know? Ask Tom, he’ll get it.’ Moth was sitting up in bed, drinking a cup of tea I’d taken him when I realized he was still asleep at eleven thirty.

‘Hi, Tom, I can’t do this Twitter thing. It’s driving me mad. Help me …’

‘It’s easy, but only follow someone back if you want to, if they have things to say that you want to read.’

‘So who?’

‘I don’t know – anyone! Who have you got there?’

‘What about this man? I think he lives up the river and he seems to have read the book.’

‘Okay, why not, follow him.’

I followed him and hours later received a direct message: ‘I read your book and loved it, are you still in Cornwall? I have an old beef and sheep farm that makes cider. If you’re still in Cornwall I’d love to have a chat, can I call you?’

‘Mum, what are you thinking of; you don’t just give people your phone number.’

‘I know, I know I shouldn’t have, I feel such an idiot. But there was just something … I don’t know, do you think I should block the number?’

‘No, you’ve done it now. Just wait and see what he wants.’

We stood on the brow of a hill, on a patch of land that had been burnt rock-hard in a summer hotter than anyone could remember. The land fell away to the river, where boats drifted on the high tide and light reflected in a white ribbon through the trees on its banks. But up on the hillside there was no water, no green. The scorched earth spread along a broad ridge, grass grazed to soil height by cattle and sheep in every field. As the grass had dried up the confined animals had been driven to eat the hedges and scratch away at the soil beneath in an attempt to find shelter from the burning sun. What could have been lush green hedges, thick barriers between fields and highways for wildlife, were now no more than stark woody stems with sparse patches of shrivelled leaves, the roots exposed to the drying air. The earth in submission.

‘They’ve started feeding silage – winter fodder crops – in midsummer. But it’s not just here. Farmers can just about hold these high livestock levels in a normal damp summer, but when there’s just a slight shift in temperature this is what you get. It’s like this right across the south this year: overstocking – and the fields can’t take it. But I’m heartbroken to see it here.’ Sam gestured animatedly across the fields with his hand. A man whose hands appeared never to have seen dirt, or caught the fleece of a ewe thick with lanolin, or laid a hedge. The clean soft hands of an office worker. ‘It’s not as if I don’t understand the land. My parents are farmers, I grew up on a farm, across the border in Devon, but we don’t farm like this.

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