The sun was already at my back when I reached the farm gate. The shadows stretched out across the deserted yard. I unhooked the latch and let the gate swing open. Even if no-one was around, I thought, I should be able to get some water.
I strolled across the yard towards another gate. The farmhouse was down a path beyond. Nothing stirred the scattered hay as my boots stomped down on the dusty concrete. My forehead was damp with sweat. I unclipped the next gate.
Going through, I turned back to close it behind me. As I turned a woman appeared on the path in front of me. She was middle-aged and had a kindly look but, as she gave me a dubious looking over, I decided she was nobody’s fool.
“Erm, hello,” I said quickly.
She nodded at me. “How do?” she said.
“I’m hiking in the area and I wondered if I could get some water. And food if you’ve got any?”
“You can have some water,” she told me but made no move towards the farmhouse, “ain’t got no food though. Where you staying?”
“I’m camping. Hoping I’ll get to a campsite at Lymstock by the evening.”
She nodded and took this in. “Won’t get to Lymstock I don’t reckon,” she told me after a minute. “Not ‘til its long dark.”
“Oh, do you think?” I asked doubtfully. I had figured on making it in a couple of hours.
“I’d not think so,” she said. “I’ll speak to the farmer, maybe you can camp here for the night.”
“Oh well, thank you,” I said.
“Come in now,” she told me and led me to the door of the farmhouse.
Inside it was dark and cool. A huge table dominated the dining room and at the end of it sat a broad, tall, white-haired man. He sat at the table with a imperious, yet relaxed manner, as though there was no trouble he couldn’t deal with and less that would even try to disturb him.
“The boy’s hiking,” the woman said, “trying to get to Lymstock. I thought we might let him camp in field over by patchfield.” The man said nothing.
“I’ll just get your water,” the woman said. She went off through the door.
The man looked at me, chewing away on a stick of what looked like dried meat. He still didn’t speak. The silence began to disturb me. I wondered if I should say something.
The woman came back with a saucepan full of water. She handed it to me. I thanked her but then realised I had no idea what to do with the pan. I fumbled around for my water bottle, then thought maybe I should just drink some straight from the pan. I tipped it towards my mouth but the lip was too rounded and I spilled a good amount straight down my chest. The water hit the floor with a quiet splash. As the two of them watched me, I reached for my water bottle and tried to unscrew the top, then realised I’d have to put the pan down. I wanted to put it on the huge kitchen table but it seemed to be a very long way away so I knelt down and put it on the floor. The woman turned around and said something to the farmer. Then she abruptly went outside, leaving the front door banging in her wake. The farmer continued to watch me as I tipped the water into my water bottle. I apologised to him for the puddle I’d left on the ground. He said nothing.
The woman returned with a mop. I smiled at her as she brought it in. Behind her through the door came a young, thin man, about my age, with tussled blond hair and a sun-beaten face. “Hi,” he said, “my name’s Jack. Do you want me to show you round?”
“Er, yeah,” I said and introduced myself.
“You can leave your bag here,” he told me and led me out into the warm afternoon. The old man at the table looked on.
“Don’t worry about those two,” Jack told me as we walked down the path away from the house. “They don’t see many visitors.”
“What sort of things do you grow here?” I asked.
“Grow?” Jack said, “we don’t grow much, only feed for our animals.”
“Oh,” I said, “what sort of animals do you have?”
“I’ll show you.”
He led me to another yard as deserted as the first, with an open barn along one side. In the barn were rows of cages. Inside little furry rodents, the size of rats but cute, jumped around.
“Hamsters?” I asked, stupidly.
Jack smiled. “We bred them ourselves. They’re a sort of cross between badgers and field mice. I say a sort of cross, because of course they’re not a cross at all.”
I didn’t understand that one bit, and it must have been obvious.
Jack attempted to explain. “That is to say, they are crossbreeds, but its not like the old ways of crossing you know, male dachshund, female terrier or whatever, nowadays we get across the species barrier. Of course that means its very technological. You can’t as easily as all that get a rat and a badger to have sex.”
I understood that much but I didn’t really want to know much more about it. We had gone past the rodents and beside us now there was a huge open pen, full of hay in which sat two large game cats. They looked like cheetahs, except broader shouldered. They didn’t seem to have been running anywhere lately. They looked fat and lazy. One of them watched me as we walked past, then yawned, showing a mouth full of gold teeth. I looked away.
“Those are the cats,” Jack said, “one of our little jokes, but a bit of a gimmick really. The most interesting thing is up here.”
He led me up a steep, paved slope, bordered by tall brambles on both sides. The bushes came together above us until we were walking through a bramble tunnel. At the end of the tunnel the path opened out onto a hill. The sun was strong in the late afternoon and the ground seemed to glow in its light. The short grass ran off into the distance. Towards the brow of the hill a group of farmhands sat, soaking up the last of the afternoon’s rays. They looked across to us as we walked on. Jack waved and they waved back.
In the middle of the field was a length of fence going from nowhere to nowhere. Jack headed straight for it. When we got closer I could see that the fence was really just a marker and that beside it there was a big hole. When we reached the hole I saw a flight of steps descending into the ground. Jack smiled to me as he led me down. “Here’s where we keep the whale,” he said.
I didn’t understand. There were about twenty steps leading under the ground and then they curved to the right. After that there was another twenty or so. The steps led to a small, claustrophobic room, narrow but very long, stretching way out under the hill. Lights ran along the left side of the room and a row of computers sat below them, the screens flickering with mathematical calculations. Along the other side the ceiling curved into the wall. It was white, with a blue tinge, standing out against the dark walls of the rest of the room. It occurred to me that it could very well have been small part of a whale’s body.
“You keep a whale here?” I asked him.
“Yep,” he smiled, “here she is.” He stroked the curve in the wall. It seemed to give a glimmer of a reaction, but it was too dark to tell.
I was totally in the dark myself. And although I was confused, no questions formed in my mind. Jack started telling me more about the whale but I heard none of it. He was pointing and explaining something. I interrupted him.
“You mean you keep a whale, here, in this hill.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling, “that’s exactly what we do.”
There was a deep rumbling in the ground all around us. “Ah,” said Jack, “time for the waterworks.” He pushed me back towards the stairs and rushed up ahead of me. We reached the top and looked out over the sun-stroked hills. The whole hill was rumbling and shaking lightly. The farmhands were heading down and across the grass. Suddenly from lower down the hill there was ejected a huge spout of water and a loud, groaning noise echoed out into the valley. The spray reached high into the air and came down like a fountain over the farmhands. They danced in the spray. Two more bursts of water followed. The farmhands made me think of peasants celebrating the death of a witch. They ran and jumped and danced, sodden in their tatty work clothes. The rumbling gently ebbed and I could hear their shouting. After a moment they stopped and walked back up the hill to where the sun was still shining. I started to walk towards them.
Jack followed me but kept his distance. When I reached them I picked up a spade left lying on the ground. I went straight to the tallest man. I was full of rage.
“Why do you keep a whale there?” I exploded, my face burning. They looked bemused. “How can you do that cruelty?”
“Why not?” asked the man. I thought of smashing the spade into his face.
“He doesn’t mind,” said a girl, “he likes it here.”
I could think of so many things to say in reply that I couldn’t choose one. Suddenly she came up to me and bit my thumb. She gripped it with her teeth and wouldn’t let it go. I smacked her across the face with the spade.
“Help me to release it,” I told them. They shrugged at me nonchalantly.
“Well if you won’t,” I said, “I’ll do it myself.”
I left them and pushed past Jack. When I’d walked a fair distance, I started to dig into the ground. The sun was at the brow of the distant hills. Idyllic clouds slung across azure sky. I realised that I would never be able to dig it out on my own.