The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [39]
The house was separated from the yard by a beech hedge that was tall enough to mask the ground floor, but there was no obvious gap to suggest an entrance. To my left was a barn, and to my right the track appeared to follow the line of the hedge round a sharp corner at the far end of the house, although flashes of prowling mastiff behind the beech trunks persuaded me that getting out for the purpose of exploration was a bad idea. As I was pondering my options, I heard the sound of a powerful motor and a tractor came roaring around the bend, towing a hay baler behind it.
I had a brief glimpse of Jess’s scowling face before she swerved past me and into the barn. Half a second later, she reversed out again, missing the back of my car by six inches as the baler swung in the opposite direction from the tractor. She performed a neat three-point turn, with the tractor a whisker away from my wing mirror, before she reversed the whole contraption back under cover. She wasn’t taking any prisoners that day, and I’m sure I did look scared as a couple of tons of metal looked like flattening my Mini.
She killed the engine and jumped down from the cab, whistling to the dogs to quit their noise. “You’re in the way,” she told me. “Another time, park up by the hedge.”
I opened my door. “Sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said curtly. “I wasn’t trying to hit you.”
“I realize that. I’d have moved except I couldn’t tell which way you were going to turn…and I didn’t want to make matters worse.”
“The opposite of what you’d expect. I thought you grew up on a farm.”
“I meant the tractor.”
She crossed her arms. “Did you want something?”
“No. I just thought I’d…see how you are. You haven’t been around and you didn’t anwer my messages.”
To my surprise, a slight flush rose in her cheeks. “I’ve been busy.”
I pushed the car door wider. “Is this a bad time? I can come back later.”
“It depends what you want.”
“Nothing. I just came for a chat.”
She frowned at me as if I’d said something peculiar. “I have to unhitch the baler and grease it. You can talk to me while I do that if you like. You’re not dressed for it, though. The barn’s pretty messy.”
“That’s OK. Everything’s washable.” I climbed out of the car and picked my way across the rutted yard in my long wrap-over skirt and leather flip-flop sandals. She eyed me disapprovingly and I wondered what was offending her. “Is something wrong?”
“You look as if you’re going to a garden party.”
“I always dress like this.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. Not on a working farm.” She nodded to some sacks of potatoes inside the barn entrance. “You can sit on one of those. What do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing in particular.”
She eased the baler forward and worked it loose from the tractor tow before pushing it back against the wall. For a small woman, she had extraordinary strength. According to her, anyone could do anything when they needed to. It was mind over matter. Until it came to talking. Her expression said very clearly that if I expected her to start the conversation, I was going to be disappointed. I watched her take a handful of grease and work it into the twine-tying pivots.
“Do you have to do this every time you use it?”
“It helps. The machine’s twenty years old.”
“Is it the only one you’ve got?”
“It’s the only baler.” She jerked her chin at a combine harvester at the other end of the barn. “That’s what handles the crops.”
I turned to look at it. “Dad had one in Zimbabwe.”
“It’s pretty much standard these days. Some people rent them but I bought that secondhand at a farm auction.”
I watched her working. “Why were you using the baler today?” I asked after a while. “I haven’t seen any crops being harvested, so there won’t be any straw yet.”
“I’m taking the hay from the field margins while the weather holds.” She seemed to think it was an intelligent question