A new intake of prospective members had arrived for their Week of Service, but Robin had nothing to do with them. She saw them being moved around the farm, doing their different tasks, but evidently she wasn’t considered sufficiently trustworthy to shepherd them around, as Vivienne and Amandeep were doing.
Those doing hard domestic and farm work received no more food than those sitting in lectures and seminars, and had less time to sleep, waking early to collect breakfast eggs and cleaning dishes every night after dinner for a hundred people. Robin’s exhaustion had reached such levels that her hands shook whenever they were free of tools or stacks of plates, shadows flickered regularly in her peripheral vision and every muscle in her body ached as though she were suffering from flu.
Resting for a moment on the handle of her pitchfork – the spring day wasn’t particularly warm, but she was sweating nonetheless – Robin looked into the pigsty visible through the stable door, where a couple of very large sows were snoozing in the intermittent sunshine, both covered in mud and faeces, a sulphurous and ammoniac smell wafting over to Robin in the damp air. As she contemplated their naked snouts, tiny eyes and the coarse hair covering their bodies, she remembered that Abigail, Wace’s daughter, had once been forced to sleep naked beside them, in all that filth, and felt repulsed.
She could hear voices over on the vegetable patch, where a few people were planting and hoeing. Robin knew for certain now that the scant number of vegetables produced on the patch by the pigsty were there merely to keep up the pretence that church members were living off the land, because she’d seen the cavernous pantry containing shelves of dehydrated noodles, own-brand tinned tomatoes and catering-sized tubs of powdered soup.
Robin had just returned to her mucking-out when a commotion over on the vegetable patch reached her ears. Moving back to the stable entrance, she saw Emily Pirbright and Jiang Wace shouting at each other while the other workers stared, aghast.
‘You’ll do as you’re told!’
‘I
Jiang attempted to force a hoe into Emily’s hands, so forcefully that she staggered back a few paces, yet stood her ground.
‘I’m not fucking doing it!’ she yelled at Jiang. ‘I won’t and you can’t fucking make me!’
Jiang raised the hoe over Emily’s head, advancing on her. A few of those watching shouted ‘No!’ and Robin, pitchfork in hand, dashed out of the stable.
‘Leave her alone!’
‘You get back to work!’ Jiang shouted at Robin, but he seemed to think better of hitting Emily, instead grabbing her by the wrist and attempting to drag her onto the vegetable patch.
‘Fuck off!’ she yelled, beating him with her free hand. ‘Fuck off, you fucking freak!’
Two of the young men in scarlet tracksuits now hurried to the struggling pair and in a few seconds had managed to persuade Jiang to release Emily, who immediately sprinted around the corner of the stable block and out of sight.
‘You’re in trouble now!’ bellowed Jiang, who was sweating. ‘Mama Mazu’ll teach you!’
‘What happened?’ said a voice behind Robin, who turned and saw, with a sinking heart, the bespectacled young woman with the large mole on her chin whom Robin had first met on the vegetable patch. The girl’s name was Shawna, and in the last few days Robin had seen far more of her than she’d have liked.
‘Emily didn’t want to work on the vegetable patch,’ said Robin, who was still wondering what could have inspired Emily’s act of resistance. However sullen she generally was, from Robin’s observation she usually accepted her work stoically.
‘She’ll pay for that,’ said Shawna, with great satisfaction. ‘You’re coming with me to the clarssrooms. We’re taking Clarss One for an hour. Oi got to choose moi own ’elper,’ she added proudly.
‘What about mucking out the stables?’ said Robin.
‘One of them can do it,’ said Shawna, waving grandly towards the workers on the vegetable patch. ‘Come on.’
So Robin propped her pitchfork against the stable wall and followed Shawna out into the misty rain, still pondering Emily’s behaviour, which she’d just connected with her refusal to eat vegetables at dinner.
‘She’s trouble, Emily,’ Shawna informed Robin, as they passed the pigsty. ‘Yew want to stay away from her.’
‘Why’s she trouble?’ asked Robin.
‘Ha ha, that’s for me to know,’ said Shawna, maddeningly smug.
Given Shawna’s lowly status, Robin imagined the eighteen-year-old had very few opportunities to condescend to anyone at Chapman Farm, and she seemed to want to make the most of a rare opportunity. As Robin had found out in the last few days, Shawna’s silence during Will Edensor’s lecture on church doctrine had been far from representative of the girl’s true nature. She was, in fact, an exhausting, non-stop talker.
