Indian Summer Blues
an excerpt

Kitty looked out over the southern fields. A patchwork of green, yellow and red spread out in front of her under the sun, and she was struck by the thought that no colour made by nature ever looked ugly or out of place. It took something as dumb as mankind to put up angular, concrete buildings and paint them a uniform shade of grey that no mountain would ever be seen dead in. It was late afternoon, and she would soon have to head back to the farmhouse, but for now she only wanted to stay out there in the fields. If she couldn’t be around Stephen she didn’t really feel like being around anybody. Well, almost anybody.
She watched the sunset over the fields, the light turning the berrystraw the colour of wildfire; her family’s land momentarily ablaze until the dusk fell down. She picked up her satchel and began the long walk back down the dirt footpaths that snaked their way between fields. The nighttime chorus of grasshoppers and crickets and all manner of other insects accompanied her as she walked. Dust kicked up from under her feet. It had been the driest summer she could remember. The claypits on the north-western side of the farm were covered in great sheets of hessian held up by scaffolding to keep the sun off the fresh clay. The heat dried out the clay so badly it was almost impossible to dig it up. Between the Danish clay taxes, and the dwindling amount of pack they were getting from each dig, the farm was already in deep financial trouble. The weather was in danger of breaking them. Her father had hired two new harmonywood strippers to work in the eastern barns. To the local inspectors, those barns held nothing but straw and derelict machinery. To her father it was their only chance at making some money, however illegal it might be. He always said it was better to break man’s law than God’s. But she worried constantly that he would be found out. Every new worker was another pair of eyes and ears that could sell them out. And not just about the harmonywood, either.

As she arrived home, she walked around to the back of the farmhouse, ducking under the washing lines filled with sheets and clothes. She would have to bring them in soon or they’d be dewy by morning. She unpegged as many clothes as she could carry in her arms and opened the back door to the kitchen.
Her mother was standing over the stove, stirring something in an enormous blackened pot. Kitty put the clothes down on the table.
“Don’t leave them there,” her mother said, as if she had eyes in the back of her head. “Put them in the airing cupboard. I’ll iron them tomorrow.”
“Are they back from Plymouth yet?” Kitty asked as she picked the clothes back up again.
“Soon, I’d expect. I’ve made enough for all of ‘em, so they’d better not dally.”
Kitty walked out into the hallway and up the wide, wooden staircase. The carpet underneath her feet was so worn in places that the green and brown pattern was almost unrecognisable. She reached the top and turned right, opening the airing cupboard and shoving the washing in where it would fit. She closed the door before any of it could come tumbling out. Her mother was struggling to hold things together while Kitty was there to help her. She felt guilty knowing that she would have to leave again in the autumn, but at the same time, she couldn’t wait to get away. There were broken floorboards underfoot, and holes in the roof that would leak should any rain bother to fall. She heard the front door slam downstairs and the loud, jumbled voices of her brothers filled the hall. They were drunk again. Kitty hovered at the top of the stairs until they had stumbled into the front room. Quietly, she tiptoed back down. As she reached the bottom of the stairs the front door opened again and her father shuffled through, his face breaking into a beaming grin as he saw her.
“My little girl!” he said, hugging her tightly. There was no scent of alcohol on him, only a mixture of tobacco and dirt. “We’ve had a good day, yes indeed. Go tell your mother to put some extra meat in the pot.” He kissed her forehead and followed her brothers into the front room. He was never drunk, she realised – the price he paid for vigilance against the police and local inspectors. Whenever he had a ‘good day’ it meant he had sold something profitable, something other than clay, and she was only glad that they had all returned safe and sound. Safe, at least.
Kitty wandered back to the kitchen where her mother had abandoned the pot on the stove and was sitting at the table, her head in her hands. Kitty went to the stove and began stirring the stew in silence. Through the window, she could see the rest of the sheets billow in the warm breeze like sails, ready to pull their home away across an ocean.