THE TRIALS OF AN ANGEL Part 9: Reality

The good days were as fleeting as a summer shower.

In June 2101 our community numbered 3284. On my seventy-fifth birthday, seven years later, we had barely a thousand living in the community. The eighth winter was vicious but we only lost four by spring. Seven were born. . . . A good year.

The numbers grew for the first time. I dared to hope there was a future for those who chose to stay. Janey died that year. Returning home in a snowstorm after helping a cow to calf she went down with pneumonia and passed a week before her fifty-fourth birthday. Fortunately the calf was healthy. To speak of death in such an offhand way is a terrible thing, but during the previous five years it was our constant companion.

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In 2101 we rarely saw large animals. An occasional stray dog or deer. They always spooked and ran off at the sight of any of us, even kids. One day in mid-May Rachael shook me awake. 

‘Ma there’s a something going on at the farm. Jason and Chad from Mandy’s gebiet came home in a panic. Something about a whole patch of carrot and parsnip dug up.’

The vegetable garden was destroyed. Remains of ripped up plants thrown across a scene of churned up soil pockmarked with deep holes. All the root veg was gone. Most of young bean, pea cabbage ruined.

We formed a gang to remove debris and rake the soil. We replanted, but they returned. Again and again. When we gave up on the veg they turned to the wheat and barley. We had potatoes we assumed safe because the leaves are poisonous. Later in the year we lost half the tubers.

That was the beginning of a war. Wild boar, deer and feral farm animals abandoned for decades (goat, sheep even cattle) raided our ever precious food supply almost daily. That was not our only problem. Foxes, dogs, wolves or their hybrids attacked our livestock. They intimidated people out in the fields. A child was mauled to death. A rumour went around that someone saw a lion.

2102 should have been a total disaster. Eighty percent of our crops were lost from raids and poor growth. A third of our sheep, a cow and her calf were killed, but there was reprieve. The previous year so bountiful we had sufficient to get through to the next growing season.

Eighteen months later when Alan and Jack finally managed to open the digital archives we learned about a ring of powerful ultrasonic beacons creating a protective beam around our land. Installed for security the report said.

They dated back to the early days just after the international agreements. I was a little girl. The hand of Lila-Grace Langley and her secret organisation’s obsession with security was written all over it. I doubt even Jonny knew. He would have told me. When Lila died I’m certain many dark secrets died with her.

Ironically the ultrasonic frequencies scared away animals so efficiently it never occurred to anybody to maintain the original wall and fences ringing the estate. After the beacons were destroyed in the solar storms the animals shied away the first year. Later, driven by hunger and the smell of our fresh growth a few wild animals risked passing through. The old broken defences no barrier to sturdy hogs and stags. Their success opened the way for scores to follow.

I was furious at not being told of this when the site was set up. If we’d have known we could have acted sooner. At our moots there was a lot of discussion about how to protect livestock and crops. No longer reasonable gatherings – panic and self-interest set in. Those with young children had different priorities from the ones who felt responsible for the whole community. The young bucks tended to be aggressive. It became increasingly difficult to arrive at an agreed solution. My attempts at mitigation often led to further disagreement.

Finally a response was decided. Due the lack of time and the effort needed, a single fence to be build separating the fields for vegetables and livestock from those used for cereal. Following the sowing season groups, mainly men, would rotate a patrol of the open fields to chase away any invading animals. At night fires would be lit at intervals around the fields and lanterns or torches issued to a group of “night watchers.”

Constructing the fence took all winter. It was a tough job. All the cutting had to be done with old handsaws and axes found in outbuildings. A couple of coppices although neglected provided a fair amount of stocks strong enough to support the fence, but we had to fell a few trees to finish the work. The loss of the trees was regrettable. We decided to extend the coppicing and set aside some areas for new growth.

Guard duties through summer took a lot of time away from people. It put an extra burden on us all. The average day spent working increased dramatically.

In my heart I felt it was time better spent shoring up the old barriers and laying down hedges for the future, but after an exhausting winter there was no appetite for this. I chose to let the community work together and learn rather than be dictated to by myself and my family. . . . I should have been more forceful.

Between helping during the growing and harvesting during the previous year Junior fitted in his search of the mansion. So much stuff he found was useful. With the help of a couple of helpers they catalogued things we didn’t need immediately and stored it in unused rooms. By the end of the year he finished in the house and started with outbuildings we’d never opened.

One of the biggest was a garage. Inside was a bunch of very old luxurious cars labelled with vaguely familiar names like Rolls-Royce and Daimler. Some were nearly two hundred years old. It was like a museum and the room so well sealed they were in pretty good condition. We had no use for machines powered by internal combustion engines. We didn’t have fuel, plus nobody knew how to work them. Junior closed and re-sealed the building.

Opening an adjacent building he discovered the hunting lodge. Racks of shot guns and rifles in ornate cabinets stuffed with boxes of ammunition and accessories didn’t seem necessary at the time. Junior locked and sealed the building. Six months later when people heard of their existence pressure began to build.

I told (ordered) my offspring to refuse any request to release even just one gun. The first time the subject was raised at a moot I blocked. They were old. Even new ones were dangerous in untrained hands. We didn’t know how stable the ammunition was, or the sealed bags of loose powder. It would be suicidal to try filling the empty spare cartridge cases with shot and powder. We had no knowledge of how much to put in or what the wadding was for. I thought I’d convinced everybody it was a bad idea and we should stick the plan we made.

Protecting our crops proved more challenging than expected. During the day it was easy to spot animals, mostly deer and goats, but chasing them away took a lot of man hours. They were smart and fast. Chasing them off, they disappeared in one direction only to re-appear a short while later in a place where there wasn’t anybody on watch. The daily cat-and-mouse wore people down. Night was even worse and much more dangerous. The wild boar came. They were hard to find and very good at finding weaknesses in the fence. Fire didn’t faze them and they attacked when confronted, especially when young ones were around. Serious injuries happened.

When two men died in late June the requests for the guns turned to angry demands.