Boxing Day morning
It was the seven o'clock alarm on a clear crisp frosty morning that the Hammonds woke up to, about an hour before dawn. Paul Hammond had to admit that he had slightly overdone it with the special bottle of malt whisky that Helen had given him for Christmas. They had seen it in the specialist shop on holiday and he had enjoyed the snifter offered, but had persuaded Helen that it was far too expensive to buy; she must've gone back later to buy it. It was smooth, comfortably relaxed by age, sweetened as if with honey and vanilla yet still tangy as a rocky island shore and smokey with peat and sharp hard water percolating through highland mountains. Yes, too smooth to check his twice double refills, that only the winds of the local downs will blow away.
He chuckled with good humour though, as Helen rolled over on her side and went back to sleep. They had been awake and up at four the previous morning, Christmas Day, as the kids were so excited, even overcoming their weariness from the long journey down from Scotland two days ago. But today everyone except Hammond slept late.
He kissed Helen on the forehead and, somewhat unnecessarily, told her to go back to sleep, that he would make the family breakfast as soon as he returned from his chores. He dressed warmly and, as he did so, worked out in his head the various tasks of the day.
He walked up the lane to the farm shop, which was a steady climb uphill all the way. There was an unknown car and a rough-looking van parked in front of the building. He didn't think it suspicious. As the alarms weren't set off, they weren't intruders, probably guests of the Medcalfs, the old van probably belonging to one of Sophie's student friends. He noted the numbers of the van and car on his clipboard, just in case. He let himself into the building and switched the light switch. The fluorescent tubes flickered before coming on, warming up slowly. He knew what that felt like early in the morning! He checked the computer which controlled the poly tunnels. It was necessarily left on all the time. It monitored the temperatures of each of the tunnels, controlled the timing and intensity of the lighting. It also adjusted the flow of water to the hydroponic tanks, feeding in the required nutrients for each different plant type. He checked the staff log-ins for the past week and saw that the light skeleton crews that came all used the codes for pricking out and putting on seedlings, with just a few hours on picking and packing salad crops for the twice weekly collections at this time of year.
He unlocked the door to the corridor leading to the poly tunnels and entered the first one. Compared to the cold and frost outside, this tunnel felt almost tropical, like a rain forest. The lights were all on, supplementing the daylight both in intensity and lengthening the day, fooling the plants into thinking it was spring then summer.
He always smiled when he came in here, thinking how much hard labour-intensive work this market garden growing used to be once upon a time. The investments that the Medcalfs had made in the equipment and set up was really paying off. The plants looked perfect, as he walked up the line. The main staff would be in the next day, the first day back after packing up the week before Christmas, picking salads ready for packing, chilling and available for collection late afternoon. Then they'd be shipped off to the supermarket distribution centres and on the shelves across several counties, first thing the following morning.
He checked the second tunnel, which was also satisfactory, at the far end of which were seedlings, some of which were ready to plant out. He decided he would open up the empty tunnel 3 on Wednesday and get a team started on pricking the young plants out into their final trays, so they would be producing salad leaves in commercially viable quantities in a matter of weeks. The fruit plantlets were also looking good and he planned opening tunnel 4 the following week or the week after at the latest, growing the tomatoes and early strawberries to start with.
He hoped to have another word with Daniel in the coming week to see if they could make a start on building the next two tunnels. The site was planned, when originally built, to take that extra capacity, once the business proved viable. It had, long ago. However, Penny's fatal illness from cancer, and Daniel's subsequent sinking into depression, had put those expansion plans on hold. Speaking to him on the afternoon the Hammonds had returned from their trip to Scotland, Daniel had seemed significantly more buoyant than at any time in the last two years. Hammond resolved to approach him as soon as the festive holidays were over, before speaking to the builders he preferred to carry out the work. With any luck they could start the building in March and have the ecosystem up and ready to start producing crops in the early summer.
He reset the building alarms and locked up the building, his checks completed to his satisfaction. The early orange fingers of dawn were already appearing in the east as he walked up towards the Grange. That was another thing he needed to speak about with Daniel, the renovation of the older part of the house, that had intended being the Hammonds' quarters until the roof leaks worsened three years ago, when the Hammonds were preparing to move in. That refurbishment work had also stopped, of course, while Penny was confined to her sick bed. The Hammonds' move to the pair of terraced cottages was only supposed to be temporary and Helen had, while they were away, expressed her concern to Paul that their current accommodation had taken on a state of permanency.
He wasn't overly concerned this morning with the field animals, now that the snow had mostly gone. The goats and sheep had plenty of feed on the hills to forage for themselves, and the pig nuts in the dispensers were topped up on Christmas Eve. They would keep for another day, when he'd get the Land-Rover out and do the rounds up and down the Downs. Although Christmas Day and Boxing Day were public holidays, where there were livestock involved, they still had to be cared for as if it was a normal day.
He headed for the stables though, to check up on the horses. When he had looked in on them last night, he had noticed that the lights were on inside the house, so he was aware that the Medcalfs were back home as expected on Christmas Day, either during the late afternoon or early evening.
On his way home from the stables this morning, he thought, he might well walk past their kitchen and see if they were up and about and had the coffee on yet. He grinned to himself at the delightful thought and even started to whistle a little tunelessly as he walked. Then he remembered that he hadn't noticed the car parked in the farm shop car park last night on his way home, it must've arrived late last night or more likely recently this morning; he wished he'd checked the heat of the bonnet or taken note sooner that there appeared to be no dew on either vehicle.
One of the pair of stable doors was wide open. He could see that from a distance, although the door restricted his view of what was happening inside until he was in the doorway. The doors were never actually locked, having never before needed to be, but they were usually kept shut during the winter, to keep the horses warm and dry inside. He assumed that Ginny wanted to saddle up Storm for an early morning ride, and it was a lot easier to walk that spirited horse out of the stable if the door was already propped open. Both the Medcalf girls were excellent riders and they had encouraged Morris and Mandy Hammond to ride the placid Daisy almost as soon as the kids could walk.
Nice girls, Hammond thought. They may be the daughters of the Boss, but that didn't make any difference, there was no end to how warm and friendly they always were towards him and his family. It was such a shame that they lost their mother so young and so suddenly.
But it wasn't Ginny or Sophie, or even Daniel who was with the horses, but a fat girl and a young man, neither of whom Hammond had never seen before. They were trying to guide Storm out of his box, without having first put a bridle on him. He was aware that that was a really stupid thing to do with such a spirited animal.
"Oiy, you two, what're doin' in here? -"
But before he could say anything else or receive a reply, everything suddenly went black and he could feel himself falling...
***
Sir Philip and Lady Barbara drove down to Lindon early in the morning of Boxing Day in her classic 1978 2-seater Mercedes 230C coupe sports car, that Sir Philip had kept locked up in one of the depots for many years, until recently. Restored and resprayed canary yellow, it looked immaculate inside and out, sitting in his huge garage, next to his similar vintage Jaguar XJ12, also restored, though painted a shiny cherry red.
"Phil, I can't believe it's the same car, it's absolutely beautiful."
"Totally restored. You thought I had dumped them when we changed over to company lease cars all those years ago, didn't you?"
"I did, or at least I assumed that's what had happened to them."
Lady Barbara sat in the driving seat of the car, it smelt comfortingly of new leather.
"You've recovered the seats, the smell of the leather in here is, well it's as if the car's brand spanking new!"
"The driver's seat is actually new, the old one was completely worn out, remember the car was five or six years old when we bought it second hand. It had already had a long hard life and high mileage before you had it."
