Nick Perry - Peaks and Troughs: In at the Deep End, High in the Hills

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PEAKS
AND
TROUGHS

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

West Newington House
10 Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS

www.polygonbooks.co.uk

Copyright Nick Perry 2016
Illustrations copyright Rosalinda Monteiro 2016

The moral right of Nick Perry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved.

A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84697 365 9
eBook ISBN 978 0 85790 912 1

Design and typesetting by Studio Monachino
Printed by X

To my children, Sam, Lysta, Seth and Belah

Most of what follows is true.
Names and locations have been changed to
protect the innocent, the guilty and the insane.

Contents

The Gift and a Journey

As we sat in the offices of Huggett, Bellows & Wilde, a firm of solicitors just down from West Hampstead Tube station, I could hear the dull hum of the Underground rumbling through the bowels of the building. It could have been mistaken for a recurring stomach complaint for it came and went every couple of minutes, then settled down until the next train passed beneath us. We had dressed for the occasion: my brother Jack and I were both wearing ties, and had even polished our shoes. This was not a natural look, and neither was Jacks hair, flattened down with Brylcreem. It was an attempt at smartness that didnt suit us. No matter how hard we tried, neither of us could ever achieve the appearance of someone well groomed.

Eventually Mr Bellows came in and sat down: wispy white; unlike us naturally neat. With a tight-lipped smile he looked at us benignly, opened the file, and in ecclesiastical tones told us we had each inherited 6,000. It did feel as if we were receiving a divine gift. We had only met this generous spinster aunt Elsie as children. She had lived on some outer branch of the family tree; I couldnt remember her name being mentioned, recognising her only in faded photographs in the family album. I suddenly felt a tremendous warmth for her, regretted that I could not express my thanks. For little though we knew it then, she had changed our lives.

Jack and I didnt speak about it, not at first, as we walked along the Finchley Road. The money, what we were going to do with it.

Thats what I was thinking about when we got to the Cosmo, a caf run by a rotund Italian called Giuseppe who operatically shouted orders back to the kitchen where his wife and children slaved. He knew us well; since he was still open at midnight, we would often end up there after the late night film in Swiss Cottage. He slid two plates of baked beans across the table in front us.

Grazie.

You boys, youre so Italian.

We buttered our toast without speaking, turning over in our minds the possibilities that now presented themselves.

For the past year Id been drifting from job to job. The lowest point had resulted from replying to an advert in the Evening Standard, filling a vacancy to work in the warehouse of a sausage skin factory. I lasted three months.

I was twenty-three, married to Ros, a Welsh girl, once a childrens nurse, now bringing up our six-month-old twins, Sam and Lysta. Jack, fifteen months younger than me, worked for our uncle, a film producer. I never knew quite what he did apart from running around all over the place picking up people from airports and taking them in taxis to various locations.

I want to leave London, get out into the countryside. Start a new life. Jack, I said, while he seemed to be counting the baked beans on his toast, this is what they call a karmic moment.

You sound like a hippy.

Can you finish your baked beans? Its annoying watching you eat them one by one.

Since meeting Ros Id become involved with the followers of Rudolf Steiner: anthroposophists, they called themselves. They cared about the earth, practising farming methods free of chemicals and pesticides. I started to attend seminars, and the more I heard the more I wanted to know. So in the summer I went to work on a Steiner farm down in Sussex, going home to Ros at weekends. I absorbed it all: phases of the moon, companion planting, the waxing and waning of everything. I lived in a sun-swung zodiac believing Id found the answer. We even played Beethoven symphonies to a herd of milking cows, convinced it would increase their milk yield.

I wouldnt mind being a shepherd, said Jack, spearing a couple of baked beans with the end of his fork. But what Id really like is a dog. A Border collie.

Lets buy a farm... Yes, lets buy a farm! I shouted, bringing my fist down on the table. After all, we were country boys at heart, brought up in Dorset. Ten minutes later we realised what a ridiculous idea it was. After all, we only had 12,000. That wasnt going to buy us a farm.

It would up in the hills of North Wales, Ros told me later.

Her enthusiasm about it all, and her parents in Caernarfonshire, made it a real possibility.

A few days later, Jack and I made a pact to put our money together and get out of London. We washed it down with a bottle of Niersteiner, a cheap German wine. Ros was delighted; she would be returning home, and Sam and Lysta would be growing up close to their grandparents.

Jack bought books on sheep farming, absorbing himself in the shepherds way of life.

What have you discovered, Jack? I asked.

Looks like its seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

You can say goodbye to your weekend lie-ins, then?

Not once did it occur to us that knowing the theory is one thing, putting it into practice quite another.

Gwyn, Ross father, rather than saying, You dont know anything about farming, was right behind the idea. A consultant paediatrician at Bangor hospital, he was a kind-hearted Quaker whose generosity showed itself in every act. Estate agents leaflets of hill farms and smallholdings began arriving in the post. Every day Gwyn was out in his VW Beetle to take a look.

A month later we drove to North Wales to stay with my in-laws in Caernarfon for the weekend. By Saturday afternoon we had put in an offer on Dyffryn, a remote hill farm of forty-eight acres above the village of Penygroes, exchanging contracts within a month. We had bought it for six thousand quid!

Through the weeks that followed we talked about nothing else. Ros wanted to grow vegetables, Jack was going to have a flock of sheep, I would look after pigs. Gwyn bought us a Morris Traveller, and I started to learn to drive around the streets of London. I said to Jack that as soon as I passed my driving test we should buy a Land Rover. Were farmers now. Straw bales in the back, a sheep dog sitting between us on the front seat.

Yes, wearing braces and a flat cap.

What, the dog?

No, us.

Jack watched One Man and His Dog every Sunday. I had to endure his endless attempts at getting the whistle just right, the one where you stick two fingers in your mouth and a piercing shrill rips through the air. He couldnt master it, but unfortunately never stopped trying.

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