Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [38]
Gerard led George over to the aerial photographs of the Mortimer fiefdom. The composite image was rich in detail. The shadows of trees and hedges and church towers suggested the pictures had been taken early in the morning.
“Here’s where we are,” Gerard said, tapping the roof of the manor.
Peering, George saw that the Humber was parked in the rear courtyard, exactly where they’d left it ten minutes earlier. He experienced a brief warping of reality, a moment of dizziness. The whiskey, probably. Go steady, he warned himself.
“Up here, see, the outskirts of Borstead. You’re, ah . . . no, you’re not quite on it. And way over here is the edge of the airfield. This is the road to Gunston and Norwich. Got your bearings?”
“Aye, I think so. It’s, er, pretty impressive.”
Gerard snorted. “Impressive, eh?” He took a swig from his glass. “You know what I see when I look at this? I see mess. Chaos. Higgledy-piggledy anarchy. Eh?”
George was perplexed. Etiquette, the rules of class distinction, obliged him to agree, but he had no idea what he would be agreeing with. So he nodded without speaking.
Gerard tapped his estates again where a square had been marked out with some sort of blue pencil.
“Look here. This is a square mile, give or take. How many separate fields are there in it? Go on, count ’em. No, don’t bother. There’re seventeen. Seven-bloody-teen. Nine separate field entrances off four different lanes. Ridiculous. Approximately fifteen percent of land area is bits and bobs of woodland and hedges that never run straight for more than a furlong. Four of the fields have been plowed. D’you see?”
George did indeed see that four irregular patches had been combed. They looked like the whorls and volutions of a giant’s fingerprint.
“Hardly a straight furrow to be seen, is there? Because the tractor had to swerve away from this lump of hedge, here, then around this little bit of woodland, here. The thing is, what’re those trees doing there? What are they for? What are the hedges for?”
George was alarmed. Mortimer had worked himself up, or down, into a state of angry depression.
He managed to say, “I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Ah!” Gerard’s exclamation was a pounce. “Of course you haven’t! Most people haven’t! God knows, my father didn’t. Or wouldn’t. But I have, George. I’ve thought about it a lot. Come and sit down. Top you up?”
“I’m fine for the minute, thanks.”
“Suit yourself. Cigarette?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” (He’d been gasping for one.)
The light was ebbing from the room now. The tobacco smoke rose in flowering blue tendrils.
“Agriculture is a business, George. And like any other business, it’s all about efficiency. I tried to get the old man to see that, but . . . well, mustn’t speak ill, and all that. But he was . . . sentimental. ‘The land is a resource, Father,’ I’d say. ‘We have to maximize our gain from it.’ And he’d smile and pat me on the head, like I was one of Nicole’s bloody spaniels.”
The intimacy of this image discomfited George, who took a cautious sip of whiskey.
“And it’s not just gain, profit. We’ve got a growing population in this country. More and more mouths to feed. And we’re not going to do it using farming methods that are a hundred years out of date. I saw the future in Canada, George. It’s mechanization. Mechanization on a grand scale. Plus”— Gerard held up a finger —“agrochemicals: