News

HEADING FOR THE HILLS

Pagesos

My wife, my part­ner, my love, Mag­gie Whit­man, is a fifth gen­er­a­tion farmer. For the past twenty years, after a ca­reer in clas­si­cal music, she has been a pagesa, most of them as a mem­ber of a sus­tain­ing moun­tain vil­lage co­op­er­a­tive.

As I write she is out in the olive grove, sweat­ing, ig­nor­ing bram­ble scratches and in­sect bites, clear­ing around the base of the ar­be­quinas in prepa­ra­tion for har­vest. Her an­kles bear the scars, her face re­flects the need. The Whit­mans are peo­ple of the land.

I will fin­ish this then join her.

In the mael­strom of now, this world of un­cer­tain­ties, the fun­da­men­tals of hav­ing to some­how find mean­ing­ful prac­tice, a rea­son to be, peace, bur­geon into focus. It can be hard to make sense of any­thing. Yet, whether it is a win­dow box, a small gar­den or a farm, it is an unas­sail­able fact that there is some­thing pro­found about nat­ural labour for our hands, a grounded, mean­ing­ful rhythm to counter the rud­der­less spin­ning of the mind.

Mag­gie’s fa­ther would be so proud. I barely knew him. He died just four years after Mag­gie and I fell in love, and al­ready by then he was fad­ing into the mists, anger and tragedy that is Alzheimer’s. But I know him bet­ter now.

I am home again, back on our patch of The Pri­o­rat, tak­ing deep breaths, push­ing loaded wheel­bar­rows and pro­cess­ing change, deep change that Mag­gie es­pe­cially needs the labour in the grove and gar­den to man­age. Her mother Beryl has now passed away, an ex­tra­or­di­nary spirit, a nurse, a font of wis­doms, a 90-year-long light. Hence, weight upon weight, the fam­ily farm back in Eng­land is being sold.

Bound by re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as ex­ecu­tor of the es­tate I donned a mask and jour­neyed, will­ingly as a son-in-law, re­luc­tantly as a con­trib­u­tor to the nico­tine seam of pol­lu­tion the al­most empty jet air­craft rose through en route north. Mag­gie, mean­while, stayed home and worked what is now the only Whit­man farm, seek­ing at the same time a path through a for­est of emo­tions. We had been back at her mother’s bed­side in March be­fore she passed away, hours be­fore lock­down, able to just be with her, to love. But the pan­demic de­nied Mag­gie the clo­sure of the grave­side and that col­lec­tive thanks­giv­ing.

David George Whit­man was his name.

I stood and stared for quite a while at his writ­ing desk which then slowly emerged from be­neath the chaotic pa­pers that had over­whelmed it dur­ing all the 28 years I had known it; like the con­fu­sions of the ill­ness that took him too young. But it held so much: Love let­ters, legal files, farm­ing and ac­count­ing cer­tifi­cates, farm­ing jour­nals, ar­chi­tec­tural plans of the evo­lu­tion of the farm­house as and when they could af­ford it, and pho­tographs, so many pho­tographs. There was so much to sift, flow­ing not just from that desk but from all cor­ners of the home and farm build­ings.

Then there were the films. 8mm films. Reels of them, jammed into a box under the stairs. David had left these too, a rare and im­mea­sur­able record of life, love, soil and toil. Now being copied, digi­tised, they will take us and our chil­dren to where we need to be right now, to the heart of fam­ily, an­other fam­ily steeped in the land. There is peace in that. And some sort of sense, of self and the sea­sons.

Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.