Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore Page 0,43
of the hole, me and PT might drown in our sleep if it rains again.’
‘I’ve made a list,’ Maxine announced. ‘Rosie and I are going to scrub this rotten house top to bottom and then unpack everything from the truck. PT said he saw some sheets of metal in the back courtyard and he’ll try patching the roof. Charles wants to transmit this evening, so Paul’s job is to unpack the radio and find a good spot for a transmission. Which leaves Marc to deal with the animals.’
Marc looked slightly stunned. ‘What animals?’
Maxine smiled. ‘According to Luc Boyle, this land was abandoned three months back and it hasn’t been worked properly since the tenant farmer and his son got conscripted into the army almost a year ago. Now, I’m led to believe that you’re our resident farming expert.’
Marc baulked. ‘I did some labouring for a farmer when I lived at the orphanage, but I’m no expert. I spent a few months working in the fields before I got assigned to mucking out cows.’
‘I told you he understood cows,’ Rosie said brightly. ‘You can go and sort out Muriel and Sarah.’
‘Please,’ Marc begged. ‘Anything but dirty stinking cows. All they’re good for is eating and shitting. And how do you know their names?’
‘I don’t,’ Rosie said. ‘I named them this morning when I went out for a look around.’
‘Besides, I’m not an expert.’
‘You might not know much,’ Maxine said, ‘but I’ve never set foot on a farm, Charles certainly hasn’t and PT, Paul and Rosie are all city kids. So you’re an expert compared to any of us.’
‘Why bother anyway?’ Marc said. ‘Henderson and PT have got loads of money. We can just buy food.’
‘We’re supposed to be a poor family living on a farm, you idiot,’ Rosie said. ‘How suspicious is it going to seem to the locals if we leave the land to grow wild and start splashing money around?’
Marc ate half a slice of bread and sipped at a cup of cold water before Maxine drove him out to work by slamming doors and deliberately banging metal pots around as she cleared out the kitchen cupboards.
His first proper look at the farm was a shock. Marc had worked with a farmer called Morel when he lived at the orphanage and was used to neat barns and carefully tended crops. Here, all he could see in every direction was backbreaking work: two fields up to his neck with stinging nettles, a rusted hand-plough, a well with no bucket and a shed-over-a-hole toilet set in a bog filled with buzzing flies.
Animals had been released to fend for themselves when the tenants left three months earlier. The chicken cages were crusted in lime and the overgrown grass around them was strewn with feathers where hens had fallen prey to foxes. There was a goat pen, but no signs of life within, and two pathetic cows fenced inside the field furthest from the house.
As Marc walked an overgrown footpath towards the cows he caught the familiar smell of manure and was surprised to find that this infused his head with an odd nostalgia for the days he’d spent on Morel’s farm near Beauvais. In particular he remembered Jae Morel, the farmer’s good-looking daughter, who’d been the closest thing he’d ever had to a girlfriend – until he accidentally knocked her into a manure pit.
The cowshed was large enough for eight animals, but the better stock had either been sold off before the owners left or pilfered afterwards. Of the pair that remained one was a calf with a deformed back leg that Marc guessed was six to eight months old. Its mother appeared in reasonable health, except for a tick infection that left raw patches on her coat.
Marc crouched down to inspect the older beast’s udder and saw that she was still producing milk for her calf. He found a pot inside the cowshed, washed it out in a trough overflowing with the previous day’s rainwater, then nervously approached, patting the cow’s side to gauge whether she was comfortable with his presence before going down on one knee and inspecting the udders for any sign of infection.
As the cow hadn’t been milked for some time there was a chance of a violent reaction, but Marc moved his hand gently down the teat and a blast of warm, creamy milk hit the bottom of the pan.
‘Good girl,’ Marc said soothingly, stroking the cow’s side as she mooed.
* * *
8Kübelwagens – open-topped German cars,