equipment and weather stations and forms for this permission and data for that. The next thing you know they’ll slap a compulsory purchase order on the place. We came here to get away from all that crap and we’ve been doing so well, we’ve been doing so well,’ he said, stirring his cereal round and round. Congealed porridge. Hard boiled eggs. Burned toast. I pointed out that the crap seemed to have caught up with us and he pushed his chair back and grabbed his scarf, saying he needed time to think about things. I said fine, take all the time you need, I’m sure it’s not urgent, then fed the toast to the dog, put the eggs to one side for lunch, scraped the porridge into the bin, missed and made a filthy mess because of the rage and the tears and the hair in my face. Couldn’t be bothered to clear it up. Kicked the bin. Threw the bowl in the sink, cracked it.
The first letter from the Drought Monitoring Watchdog arrived the following morning. Aerial photos showed a higher than normal level of water retention in the soil on our land and they wanted to drill a small, exploratory testing hole. The second letter arrived only three days later. As we had failed to lodge an objection to the first letter, within the specified time limit, the drilling would commence shortly. Third, fourth, fifth, innumerable letters asserted the rights of the state to use, take, drill, occupy, requisition our land. Mark ripped the envelopes into shreds, filed the forms in his desk, the lawyer in him furious at the breaching of proper procedures and the man in him railing at the disregard for his rights. He was going to fight it, he said, fight, fight, fight, thumping the table in time to his rage. Resting my hands on his fists, I tried to still him, pointing out that we could be entering a world where having the letter of the law on our side was not enough.
Events proved me right, of course. We watched, at first incredulous and then fearful, as events unfolded at a smallholding in Devon called Duccombe, which, like ours, seemed to benefit from unlikely rain. The compulsory purchase order became an eviction order, the eviction order was enacted by bulldozers and bailiffs and the groups of protestors who had camped out at the farm in defence of the old couple who lived there were shown on the news with bloodied heads and placards stamped into the mud, as the riot police moved in. An ambulance was driven up to the house and it was confirmed later that the farmer had apparently died of a heart attack. Two days later, the farmhouse burned to the ground and conspiracy theories swept the internet as violently and rapidly as the flames which had consumed the thatch. The national uproar was deafening. Anyone with an interest in the environment, human rights, farming, legal aid, signed a petition. Duccombe seemed to act as spark to the smouldering confusion about who was to manage this drought and how. Pent-up fury erupted: fury about profits being made by big businesses trading in water while elderly people’s homes were rationed and non-emergency operations were delayed, if not cancelled; fury about ministers filmed drinking wine on green lawns at Chequers while workers at car plants were put on a four-day week; fury about the exclusion of Westminster from proposed Level 5 drought restrictions, while children in some parts of the southeast only attended school in the morning to save electricity. A march in central London drew half a million people. The government faced a vote of no confidence in its handling of the water crisis. Three people died in clashes with police at a private reservoir on Lord Baddington’s estate.
‘What’s going to happen to us?’ I asked Mark, hugging my knees tight as I watched the news. The question was a familiar one; I had asked it before when we were under a different sort of attack in London, but Mark didn’t seem to hear the echo.
‘Not that,’ he said, aiming the remote at the television and silencing it. ‘They won’t force us from The Well. They wouldn’t dare now. They’ll be looking for some sort of agreement. We’re in a stronger position, because of Duccombe, even if we have to go all the way to court.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ I said. ‘I’m off to bed!’ I damped down the fire, gave Bru a biscuit and kissed him goodnight.
Mark was partially correct. The official attack on us abated, but the locals were fighting a far more vicious war. Bru had been out hunting and failed to appear for his supper. We stayed out as dusk turned to dark, calling him, banging a spoon against his metal bowl, convinced that any moment now he would rustle up through the brambles, exhausted from hunting, slinking towards us with his tail wagging, expecting a scolding for being out late. We left the back door open for him. Mark said he’d be home, but I slept badly, creeping downstairs in the middle of the night, hoping I’d touch his soft body in the dim light, asleep by the Rayburn, or believing I could hear the click of his paws on the floorboards, coming upstairs to let us know he was safe. Mark felt the emptiness of the cottage as soon as he opened his eyes. He woke me and we dressed quickly in thick jumpers and boots and separated out over the fields to resume our search, our legs making slow work in the heavy mud, our shoulders hunched against the gusting easterly wind. Caught on barbed wire, stuck down a badger set, hit by a car – I went through all the possibilities. I wondered if he could have been shot as a sheep worrier, spotted in the distance, out amongst the pregnant ewes, but it seemed unlikely when the only people out on the land would have been the Taylors and they would recognise him. I beat the boundaries of The Well, praying that we would find him, calling his name over and over and over again. Someone told me later that if you’re searching you should not call relentlessly, because although the frantic clamour might seem purposeful at the time, it’s actually only ever in the silence that you can hear the cries for help.
It would not have made any difference for Bru. He was lying amongst the sodden leaves and dead wood, camouflaged by the undergrowth and the detritus of the winter wood, soft feathers of a white pheasant resting like snow on the mould and the mulch around him. One front leg was bent at the joint with the soft paw towards me, the other straight, just like they used to be when he was twitching and dreaming in front of the fire. His head was stretched out before him at an unnatural angle, his eyes were open, but there was no love left in them. He was unmarked, undamaged, as perfect as he had ever been. I might have wished he was just injured, prayed that he would lift his head, convinced myself that his ribs were moving with the rhythm that signifies breath, swore blind that there was a twitch in his tail when he saw me – although I might have and I did wish all of those things, there was no point, because he was dead.
Maybe people do fall on the bodies of those they love and weep into their stiff, cold hair, but I hardly dared to touch him. I shouted for Mark. I ran to the edge of the wood and screamed. He was too far away. I stumbled back, but there was no hurry. Bru was still there, nothing had changed, he was dead. How, it was not clear. Finally, I found the courage to feel the velvet of his ear between my fingers and stroke the long length of his young body, but there was no injury that I could feel. As I cried, I tried to lift him and as I tried to lift him, I cried. He was heavy. Fifteen bags of sugar; I was weighing my dead dog in bags of sugar. And awkward, rigid. He slipped from my circled arms and thudded to the ground and I had to start all over again, trying to be gentle, as though I were trying not to wake him. George’s is a wild wood, long neglected; nobody has thinned the trees for generations and the undergrowth, left to its own devices, has become tight and mean. The brambles pulled their knives and the roots raised their boots to trip me unawares. It was impossible to climb the fence carrying him, so I had to drop him over the wire. He landed as if he was worth nothing. Mark, I called again and again, I’ve found him, I’ve found him. When I was just within sight of the house, he saw me, came running, took Bru and laid him in front of the Rayburn, gently placing his beautiful, black and white head on a cushion and we clung to each other, worldless.
The vet said it must have been deliberate, almost certainly a dead bird laced with a restricted strychnine-based pesticide, and he advised us to trawl the woods and dispose of any more bait.
Mark dug the grave in grim silence, forcing the spade into the earth as if he could root out the pain, but I wept, noisily and helplessly. He said we had to wrap his body in plastic so the badgers would not disturb him, although how he knew such a thing about burials I’ve no idea. There were some rolls of polythene in the shed left over from the work on the barn roof, but I could not bring myself to fetch one. Then I struggled to help Mark fold the awkward sheeting over Bru’s stiff legs, couldn’t find the end of the
