Days Without Number Read Online Free PDF

this, aren't you, Andrew? I mean, Irene said you were, but . . .'
    'No harm in checking, is there? Of course I'm in favour.' He leaned back in his chair and gazed through the window into the yard. 'Why wouldn't I be? This farm makes less and less money every year. What's the point of struggling on with nothing to show for it and no-one to pass the place on to?'
    'Tom not interested?' Andrew's son had never displayed any enthusiasm for farming that Nick knew of, but still he felt obliged to ask.
    'I wouldn't know what he's interested in. Haven't heard from him since Christmas. And that was just a card with his name on it. No message.'
    'Is he still in Edinburgh?'
    'According to the postmark, yeah. His course finished last summer. I didn't even get invited to the degree ceremony. I'm sure Kate went, though. And that Mawson slob.' The references to his ex-wife and her second husband did not suggest any lessening of hostility with the passage of time. But Andrew did not seem to want to dwell on the point. He had probably dwelt on it too long already. 'Look, Nick, the way I see it we could net at least half as much again as Tantris is currently offering by playing hard to get. He'll pay whatever he has to. It'd be crazy to turn our backs on a deal like this. Naturally, we're agreed. Irene doesn't want to be a pub landlady for the rest of her life any more than Anna wants to go on emptying bedpans. I need the money, God knows. So does Basil. And you're obviously not going to refuse your share. Dad just has to be made to appreciate how much we stand to gain.'
    'But what does he stand to gain?'
    'The comfort of knowing that he doesn't have to worry about us any more.' Andrew raised a smile. 'Wouldn't you think that'd be enough?'
    It was agreed when Nick left that they would say nothing about his visit when they met at Trennor the next day. In
    36
    truth, Nick found himself wishing he really had not gone to Carwether at all. Absence - of Kate, of Tom, of hope - had been stronger there than Andrew's own presence. Farming had been his vocation since boyhood. He had wanted to do only that and nothing else. But now his vocation was exhausted. Maybe Tantris's offer had forced him to acknowledge that painful truth. If so, what might follow upon rejection of the offer did not bear thinking about.
    Nick took the A30 east across Bodmin Moor, then headed south through Callington towards Saltash. He chose the route despite, or perhaps because of, the diversion he would be tempted to take. And sure enough he did not resist the temptation.
    At Paynter's Cross he turned off along the well remembered lane between the high hedges and the anciently bounded fields that sloped down towards the long, lazy meander of the Tamar as it broadened into the estuary. Not far off now, across those silent pastures, his father was living and breathing and whiling away his day. But Nick was not going to see him. Not if his luck held, anyway. He was not going home - if that was what Trennor really was. He was merely visiting his roots.
    Landulph as a settlement barely existed. The parish was centred on Cargreen, a mile away. There were a few cottages near Landulph Church, at the far southern end of the lane Nick had followed from the main road, and a couple of farms within sight. That was it. Trennor lay half a mile off to the west, concealed by a fold of the land. A track led down from the church to the mud-flats bordering the Tamar, winding as it did so between the grounds of the old rectory and an area of marshland converted to meadow in the early nineteenth century and protected from flooding by a dyke.
    Nick knew the area with an exactness only lengthy childhood explorations could confer. Every field, every farm, every step of the path round the foreshore to Cargreen and beyond.
    37
    He did not need to walk down the track and stand on the dyke to look across at Warleigh Wood and the delicate span of the railway bridge over the Tavy. He could see them clearly