How We Live Now

05

They made it through a bitterly cold January through tenacity alone, and an Aga that was never allowed to cool down. They drank herb tea and read and worked on their little farm, pulling winter root-vegetables and starting to prepare in the greenhouse for sowing seeds, and Daisy spent the hours when she wasn't working or cooking, sitting at the kitchen-table with a notebook. She had started to write everything down, and it was healing to her, as much as the animals were for Isaac and being home, with them, was for Piper.

In February, they had snow. This meant, Isaac said, that it was warmer than it had been all the previous month. They had had hail during January and torrential rains, thunderstorms that kept Baz up all night because they sounded too much like warfare.

But the snow… It blanketed everything in pristine white, and with no cars to dirty everything to grey sludge, the English countryside became a postcard. Piper couldn't resist building a snowman in the garden complete with horse-chestnut eyes and carrot nose, but they had to hike over to the neighbouring farm to gather more feed because the animals couldn't get out to forage what wasn't there. Even Piper couldn't find much, and they were even more careful with their rations. They heard on the radio that the North was going through the worst winter in years, as much due to the snow as the lack of life-giving power, and they appreciated their eight inches of snow for what it was; a pretty inconvenience, at worst.

But the snow had a magical effect, dampening every sound, cocooning them. Daisy loved the soft crunch underfoot and the delicate snowflakes drifting idly past, clinging to her eyelashes and tickling her lips. And it did feel warmer than January had; and it showed how strong they had all grown, in sweaters and gardeners' gloves and Wellies and not much else, carrying on with their chores in spite of the snow, because the activity kept them warm, kept them hungry, and rosti potatoes and a fried egg with a pot of herb tea was one of the best things in the world.

On one of the balmier February days, the snows had started to melt in sunshine that was brighter and hotter than Daisy could remember for months, and Piper smiled and they went for a walk to Hawk Hill to get a look at how the land lay now with the snows melting, and Piper pointed out the foot-high hellebores that were curious and unassuming and very pretty and stubbornly flowering amid the snow, and the dainty snowdrops that peeked through pristine white and fresh green, and the vivid spots of colour that were saffron-yellow and startling purple crocuses. There were even some early cream-coloured primroses that signalled the coming of spring if nothing else did. They could hear birds singing and the melting snow crunched underfoot, and they stood frozen when Jet started to bark, and bolted as if he had scented a rabbit.

Piper glanced at Daisy, wondering, Where's he off to in such a hurry?

Daisy shrugged, but Jet started barking then, loudly and persistently, and because Piper darted off after him in case he was in trouble, Daisy had no choice to follow, and though Daisy trusted the intuitive sheepdog, if anything happened to her or Piper because of him, she would never forgive him.

Jet found Edmond.

At least, under the swelling and bruising, and the healing and new burns, and open cuts and sores, Daisy recognised his large hands and the long nose and the bruised jawline. Edmond.

He was deathly thin, worse than any of them had ever been at their worst, and what they could see of his skin was vividly bruised under the dirt, open cuts angry and healed wounds pink and puckered. His cheeks would've been totally hollow if it weren't for the bruising, which had swollen one side of his face to grotesque proportions, the other side not as swollen but just as bruised, and his eyes were so swollen they were sealed shut. He wore a battered coat and jeans and his old hiking boots but no gloves and he wore no hat.

"Daisy…?"

Jet had found him by the hawk's sanctuary, curled up on the ground. He must have found the familiar landmark and collapsed there, perhaps the relief of finding it sapping him of his last willpower to keep going just that bit farther. Maybe he dreaded what he might find if he made it home.

There had never been a doubt in Daisy's mind that Edmond would return home to them.

But had he worried that they never would? When he had separated from Isaac, had he ever had a heart-crushing moment of realisation that Isaac was no longer by his side…?

She reached down, carefully, not wanting to startle him, and gently turned Edmond onto his back. She pressed her two fingers against his pulse-point and breathed a sigh of relief as she heard the sound of agonised breathing more like a groan. But he was alive.

Her eyes burning, hot tears dripping silently down her cold cheeks, Daisy knelt down and leaned over Edmond and pressed her cheek to his and whispered that he was safe; he was home; they had found him; Jet had found him; they were going to take him home; they would look after him; they had missed him; they loved him; she was in love with him; and they were never going to separate again.

Daisy told Piper to go and get the boys, and to set water to boil and get the emergency blanket from the First Aid kit and clean clothes, and between the three of them, Baz and Isaac and Daisy, they carried shockingly thin Edmond to the house. Piper had set about getting everything ready, had thrown an old sheet over the couch so they could lay Edmond down, but he started and Jet had to curl up at his hip like he used to, to calm him. Isaac was shell-shocked, and Piper was silently crying as she opened the First Aid kit and Baz helped strip the clothes from Edmond's body, and Daisy worked on auto-pilot and didn't let it in that Edmond was here, because this broken boy in front of her wasn't her Edmond, but he needed her regardless and thoughts of him were all that had kept her going when keeping Piper alive and safe had overwhelmed her and filled her with nothing but a sense of futility.

As if sensing how volatile Isaac and Piper were in that moment, Baz took them out to check on the animals while Daisy tended to their brother. Because the sight of him like this had broken Daisy's shrivelled, battered heart into a billion-trillion pieces.

Edmond's body told a story of neglect and abuse, and Daisy doubted she would ever learn the details even if she had wanted to. She washed him from his hair to his toes: Like them, his feet were calloused from blisters hardening, and from there up everything was either cut or badly bruised. His knees were black; his thighs burned by cigarettes, just like his chest, which was a crisscross of what looked like belt-lashes, healing scars and bright red cuts, purplish and healing greenish-yellow bruises, and she could count every one of his ribs, any substance he'd once had now a memory. From his fingertips to halfway up his forearms, his skin was blistered and peeled, covered in burns. Baz had to help her reset two dislocated fingers, and she used medical tape to bind them together to heal. His fingernails were blackened with bruises. What looked like a healed bullet wound scarred his shoulder and must have missed his collarbone by a fraction of an inch, and Baz murmured quietly one night that it looked like it might've been a through-and-through and someone had treated the wound by burning it. His neck was cut and Baz recognised the wound on his cheek as someone having punched him possibly while wearing a heavy ring, because it had nicked the skin and looked sore. He had to have taken a good few hits to the face for all that swelling, but as the days went on, it started to go down.

After getting him washed down, including his back, which was another story altogether, Daisy rationed the ointment and used some of Piper's honey to treat the wounds, though the burns had to heal on their own, she didn't want to make them worse. She even rinsed and washed his hair, combing it through; she covered him in the silvery emergency-blanket, with many more bundled on top, and she knew he shivered for a long time before the warmth started to do its job, and maybe he slipped into a dreamless sleep, because he lay perfectly still, just breathing gently, with Jet curled at his side, for a day and a night.

It didn't take long to realise that their Edmond had disappeared at Gatesfield. Maybe he had tucked away that Eddie in a quiet little place inside his mind, too frightened to let him out and expose him to more pain, but the Edmond who had crawled to the hawk sanctuary in the snow was altered.

He could feel what he looked like even if he didn't look in any mirrors to see it; and she wondered a couple times whether he felt ashamed that they had all seen him that way. It didn't matter. He hadn't seen them at their worst; who were they to judge him at his?

Maybe it was the familiar voices, or Jet's warmth and the familiar way he curled up at Edmond's side, maybe it was the fact that no-one touched him except with utmost tenderness and care, maybe it was all those things combined with warmth, but his shaking frail body started to relax, and heal, and the swelling over his eyes went down gradually, but he never looked anyone in the eye, not for a long while. They cared for him as much as he would let them; they nurtured him like a dying starving thing, because he was. Like them, like Baz, they rationed his food, little and often, first spoonfuls of flavourful broth, then soup, and eventually the rice-pudding Daisy made using rice, goat's milk, honey and nutmeg and baked in the Aga for a treat.

It was different with Edmond home; because he wasn't their Edmond and his brother and sister knew it. The burns and scars and abuse hit Isaac the worst; it had happened to Edmond after they separated.

Perhaps it was because Daisy hadn't known Edmond as long, regardless of being in love with him, that he let her look after him, in a way he averted his gaze and closed himself off to Isaac and even Piper. She told them it wasn't their fault, and it wasn't Edmond's either, and Baz said it would take a while for Edmond's mind to heal from the trauma his body was steadily healing from. Baz was a soldier and had seen too many lads like Edmond, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, and he said it wasn't a surprise. Edmond was protecting himself. By not engaging with them, by not speaking - he never said a word, even when he had to be in discomfort - he was protecting himself from further pain.

Daisy knew he had witnessed the massacre at Gatesfield. It didn't take a genius to figure that out. And he was punishing himself. Edmond had turned all that pain and hate inward; she guessed he blamed himself for not getting to the farm in time, that in not convincing the others to leave he had failed them, and it was his fault they had been killed.

For days, he lay on the couch, tucked under blankets, guarded by Jet, waited on by the others; Daisy kept cooking, and they kept doing their chores. Life went on, and gradually Edmond reclaimed his place in their family, their lives.

He never spoke.

But he worked.

He took to the gardens and fields with a furious devotion that frightened her. Day after day, in all weathers, Edmond left the house with the birds, the sky just starting to lighten, and he toiled. He channelled all that pain and impotent rage and turned it into harrowing beauty.

As the days turned into weeks and weeks became months and Edmond grew physically stronger, gradually his old mannerisms returned. He never spoke, but he listened, and communicated in his silent, watchful way, and after the first few skittish jumps and wary looks from under his eyelashes, he let Daisy touch him. Just gently, a hand brushing his shoulder or touching his waist, running her knuckles gently over his jaw, sifting her fingers through his dark hair… He still froze for an instant if she dared approach him from behind, but now he allowed her to thread her arms around his middle and rest her cheek against his shoulder-blade and listen to his heart beating strongly. He let her take his hand whenever they went for walks, foraging the hedgerows, and sometimes when they were working in the flower-garden and she was content to toil beside him amongst the vibrant flowers, she felt her lips twitch into a smile and sometimes, she caught him staring at her face with something like longing, and frustration.

Edmond was in there.

She concerted all her willpower into being patient, for Edmond.

It wasn't always easy. But nothing in their lives was now. Isaac had it worst, trying to accept this new brother he recognised, but didn't understand. Piper was Piper, and that helped more than she would ever know. To her, Edmond was still Edmond, because he had always been quiet and intuitive and they went on long walks foraging together with Jet and a wicker-basket; but Isaac had been the one to force Edmond from Gatesfield, the one Edmond had left behind when he couldn't bear it.

Piper was solemn and smiling, and Isaac was frustrated by the humans; only his animals calmed him.

The only time Daisy lost it was when Edmond hurt himself on purpose.

She found him in the downstairs cloakroom, lines of red vivid on his tanned skin. She has asked, Did he hurt himself? And realised that, yes, he had hurt himself.

Don't you ever try and leave us again!

She pressed a washcloth over his arm and held it tight as he writhed away from her, but she held fast and glared up at him and felt tears burning her cheeks and hated them, because she was furious, You work yourself to death in that garden working on the dahlias, and go out in the snow to wrap hay around the plants if you want but don't you dare hurt yourself. And she pulled him into a hug, and somewhere along the way he melted, and held her in a way he hadn't in months, his big strong hands on her lower-back searing her cool skin, the thump of his heart frenzied under her ear, his scent and his warmth and his strength seeping into her, and his tight hug was his apology, for scaring her worse than anything she had yet endured.

Maybe he hurt himself out of frustration. He hadn't said a word in months, not to anyone, though Piper carried on a conversation with him as if he did, and Baz would speak quietly to him about things Daisy didn't ask about but seemed to calm him. He stood and took Isaac's yelling, his jaw working, eyes glazed but pointed at the floor and she saw his hands shaking and he would sometimes pinch himself, but Edmond would not speak.

After the Occupation ended and Baz put on his fatigues again, it was June. Almost an entire year had passed since the detonation of the nuclear-bomb that destroyed London, and Edmond's flower-garden was the most beautiful and most harrowing thing Daisy had ever seen. Piper cried when she hugged Baz goodbye; Isaac was solemn but managed a smile and said something optimistic.

Edmond knew what was going on. He knew what Baz was returning to. They tried to coax him to say goodbye, or hug Baz or anything; he stayed in the garden, furiously working, until late into the night and Daisy carried a lantern outside, wrapped in a blanket, and she sat in the amber light on the edge of one of the raised beds and waited. And she saw the tears glinting on his cheeks, and eventually he collapsed, exhausted, physically and emotionally done, and laid his head in her lap and his big shoulders heaved as she rubbed his back.

None of them had wanted Baz to leave; but Edmond knew better than all of them what might be his fate. And sometimes death was easier.

After the Occupation, Britain regrouped. A new Government had formed; the power was turned back on, though they had gotten so used to living without it that none of them liked turning on the lights. Daisy did use the washing-machine for laundry, though. The village had survived largely unscathed, buildings-wise, with only a handful of homes burned out, and those who could had started to return, to reclaim their homes; refugees trickled out from the London Boroughs, and that was how their small farm gave work to twenty people. Somehow, because they had experience and had kept their own small farm going over the winter throughout the Occupation, even though it was just four skinny kids and a healing Land Army reserve and they had next to no power and a healthy distrust of strangers, they were allocated the land previously owned by their neighbours, the Bowens. Neither of them had survived the Occupation; but Isaac said they'd be happy their land was being properly farmed again.

Crops spread as far as the eye could see, and they toiled the old-fashioned way, rising at dawn, putting in hours of backbreaking work. Daisy's initial scepticism about Isaac's success in growing mushrooms was proven wrong; Piper taught cheese-making to native Londoners who had never even seen a live chicken, and her herd of goats grew. Somehow, people heard about the farm, and of the magic of Isaac and Edmond and Piper, who coaxed and treated and gentled any animal that was brought to them. They acquired some ducks, and geese, and the introduction of a cockerel meant they could breed chickens, while keeping a select few ladies cloistered like nuns for the sole production of eggs. Isaac bred his pigs, and this drew a skilled butcher to the farm, who taught them about slaughtering and carving the animals, and also how to make sausages and black- pudding and smoke and cure the meat. Edmond took no part in that aspect of the farm. But he had figured out how to trap rabbits, rather than snare and kill them; they bred rabbits for meat, and the once-disbanded local shooting club re-emerged from the ashes of the Occupation, and pheasant was added to the offerings. Due to the practicalities of shooting, the ammunition and the guns, it was rare that they were brought a deer, but the entire village knew about it when one had been hunted. The deer population across Britain grew; and they became complacent around humans, to the point that they maintained a small herd of deer for meat when Edmond coaxed a herd home one misty dusk.

In a lot of ways, in the country at least, life returned to the way it had been for centuries, the farms the source of work and the centre of local life. The farm had drawn the butcher to them; and also a veterinarian, a sheep-farmer who had lost his home and most of his flock, and refugees from London who had rarely seen the countryside and quickly fell in love with Piper gentle solemnity and respected Edmond's PTSD and even seemed to admire Daisy's patience.

It wasn't just their home anymore, or even just a farm; it was the centre of a small but somehow, miraculously, thriving community. There were withered old farmers with hacking laughs and gnarled walking-sticks and holes in their Wellies, and there were Afro-Caribbean émigrés from London with their small kids who learned to milk goats and pick cauliflowers like the best of them, and a young teacher who gave lessons to the kids and loved Aunt Penn's library but also managed the administration of the farm for them and helped with the egg-hunting every morning and learned a lot from Piper and Edmond and Isaac about foraging.

The continued absence of machinery meant that after the Occupation, at least one species was happy; the honeybees. Wildflowers thrived, and so did the honeybees. Daisy had adopted Aunt Penn's hives; it was something she and Edmond did together, and he had taught her all he knew, without ever having to say a word. She had learned how to be as intuitive and observant as he was through proximity, and patience.

The old farmer had lost his farm but managed to save a few of his sheep, and because their farm had ancestrally bred sheep for the meat and the wool, and the countryside was beautiful and lush, they thrived. Edmond was calmest in his garden, but the next best thing was tending to the cows. They had a small herd that lived in the meadow and liked wandering to the common, and were bred for meat as well as dairy; they had glossy chestnut coats and big black intelligent, calm eyes, and they loved Edmond. Daisy liked when the baby calves sucked on her fingers urgently; there was no more intense breeding, either, the calves stayed by their mothers and male offspring was prized because they could breed.

The village filled up, even the rooms above the pub, and they trudged to the village hall once a month for announcements, or else listened every Sunday to special Government reports on the radio. National Service was reintroduced: most of the workers on the farm were serving theirs, though some had asked to stay after they finished their two years. As the war went on, they became home to a handful of soldiers discharged for the same reason Edmond was declared by an expert psychologist as Unfit for Active Duty when he turned eighteen; they had post-traumatic stress disorder. They worked side-by-side with Edmond, who still didn't speak, but they learned from him, and in working they started healing, and they were good hard-workers who treated little Piper like a queen and brought Daisy posies of wildflowers they had picked on their walks back to the house.

The word conscription was bandied about, but for a few years there were still enough people like Baz willing to sign up and fight - if it meant somewhere to sleep and a meal every day, which they couldn't be guaranteed elsewhere - and only in the last few months of the British involvement in active fighting was it introduced; Isaac narrowly missed it, but would have had special dispensation anyway. He was too vital where he was. Everywhere in the area, they called him the Witch Doctor; he was extraordinary with the diagnosing and treating of sick animals. Sometimes it was medical, sometimes it was behavioural, but either way, good livestock was too precious to waste.

It was years before they learned that Aunt Penn had been shot trying to re-enter England just months after the London atomic-bomb, trying to get back to her children.

But Piper was right, in a way: Aunt Penn's work had saved the world. The backbone of the new global peace treaties had been written by Aunt Penn.

By the time the American consular caught up to her a second time, Daisy had already applied for dual-citizenship, based on her mother's nationality, and if her father had done so when she was born she could've avoided a lot of aggravation.

She served her two years' National Service on the farm, rehabilitating soldiers discharged from active duty for mental-health issues. She guessed she had spent so much time in various shrinks' offices in her adolescence that she had achieved a degree in psychology through osmosis.

But she did receive a new passport, and it declared her British, and that was that.

The day her new passport arrived by Royal Mail, Edmond calmly approached her, standing close like he always used to, twining his fingers with hers, and rested his forehead against hers.

When things like airports and international post opened up again, Daisy sent a letter to her father.

She told him she forgave him for her shitty upbringing, for his atrocious taste in women; and she thanked him for sending her home, to her family. She told him about her cousins, and about the Occupation, and the farm. She told him about Edmond, who, after years, and the certainty that she was staying that came with her passport and with their quiet wedding, and the birth of their first daughter Penn, was starting to speak again.

The day she was born, it was hot, and bright, and the birds sang just like they had on that Perfect Day so long ago. Edmond held her in his strong, scarred arms, and for the first time, Daisy saw him cry. His eyes alive, he kissed her tiny fingers and her tiny petal lips and he whispered I'm very happy to meet you.

They worked on the farm, with Isaac and Piper and their friends, and they raised their children, and they loved each other with a ferocity and tenderness and devotion that transcended all pain, and that is how we live now…