Shortfall

By William Bowden

The Mollos had come to England to start a new life, buying a small farm in the heart of Devon, only to have their dream cruelly snatched from them. Now their teenage daughter has risked the family farm in a desperate attempt to preserve her parents' legacy, betting everything on a new type of crop.

 

But the country is in the midst of a financial crisis, and with more trouble looming, a Machiavellian mandarin has cooked up an outlandish scheme to manage what might otherwise be a difficult situation, threatening the young girl's plans.

 

Shortfall is a fictional tale inspired in some small part by real events now thought lost to time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Bowden
• Release date: Sep 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393377429

William Bowden

William Bowden is a British Science Fiction author. He lives near the city of Bristol and when not writing rules over his unruly garden.

Book preview

A picture containing bird, flower Description automatically generated

Self-published by William Bowden in 2016

Text Copyright © 2016 William Bowden

All Rights Reserved

The right of William Bowden to be identified as the author has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. All characters in this work are fictitious and any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover art by stock09/shutterstock.com

MAY

The hinge side of the gate still has the strength in it to take Jamie’s weight, as far gone as the rest of it is, its iron bars caked in flaking rust, and his heavy boots thump down onto the dry soil bed at the edge of the crop, a sea of yellow stretching out before the fresh-faced youth, the air thick with its heavy, cloying fragrance.

What you doing? calls out Frank from the other side, a scowl for his son. We ain’t got the time.

Jamie opens up his penknife, cutting away the flowering top from the nearest stalk to hand. The flowers are quite dainty, set as they are against the fleshy green that supports them.

Russell reckons this lot’s some new hybrid, he says. For cooking and such. Can’t use regular rapeseed for cooking, see, but this lot you can.

Can’t see womenfolk buying a bottle of that.

Reckon they’ll just come up with some fancy name.

Mad, if you ask me, says Frank, looking out over the rolling land. Should be beef in they fields.

Diversification, Dad—

Don’t you go filling your head with such nonsense, Frank says, jabbing his point home. Beef and dairy. That’s what we farm round here.

Jamie tosses the stalk to the ground, the rebuke all too evident on his face, his gaze shifting to the distance, his father’s following it—a tractor spraying the crop.

That’ll be Shimoney Mollo, says Frank.

How come we’ve not seen her before? asks Jamie. They’ve been there two years.

Kept to theyselves, did the Mollos. Schooled the girl at home, seems.

Jamie can’t help but look farther afield, to a collection of farm buildings, the nearest few a blackened ruin. Dovecote Farm.

Got burnt in the fire, Franks says. All over, like. Got her lungs too, so the old man says. Can’t speak proper. Covers herself up like an Arab.

Jamie returns to the tractor; his gaze is unwavering,

Come on, says Frank, rattling the gate. Can’t be dawdling here all day. Got work waiting.

It’s true. They have. A farmer’s day is long, the work never-ending. Jamie reluctantly climbs back over the gate, his father surveying the patchwork of green and yellow sprawled about them, the grass as it should be, and the alien invader newly arrived, rapeseed being largely unknown in the Devonshire countryside. It was said that by the 1980s it would be commonplace, but Frank Rumford can’t see that happening.

Inherited the lot, he says, with a wistful shake of the head. Not a day over eighteen, mind. Naught to her…and burnt like that. Reckon the whole thing messed with her head.

* * *

Baggy army surplus trousers and jacket conceal the diminutive figure of Shimoney Mollo, the extensive alterations required to reduce the smallest size the store had, still falling short of the tailored fit that could have been achieved. Shim had wanted it that way, and she had cut and sewn the outfit herself, adding just one flourish—a small Italian flag shoulder patch.

The hood that came with the jacket remains attached but lies flat against her back, her head instead entirely covered by a shemagh, an Arabian headscarf of patterned cloth that conceals all but her eyes, those being hidden behind an oversized pair of Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, the sea of yellow rapeseed reflected in them.

Gloved hands grip the steering wheel of her 1960s Lamborghini tractor, while booted feet reach its pedals by means of wooden blocks tied on with binder cord. She is done for the day, the last of the pesticide exhausted, her own reserves just as depleted, the faithful machine seeing her home safely.

The tractor chugs past the blackened parade of burnt-out frames, coming to a halt before the one remaining structure in what had been a line of livestock sheds.

Not intended for someone of Shim’s stature, the tractor’s single step has been functionally replaced by a short ladder lashed to the side, enabling her to swing out and clamber down. No sooner is she on the ground than her gaze flicks to one particular direction, its attention grabbed; a quick step away from the ladder affords a better view, the aviators locked onto some unseen thing.

The moment passes, and, seemingly satisfied that she is alone, Shim looks about before heading off to disappear into an old stone barn, part of a group of outbuildings arranged around the farm’s yard—the farm as it had been before the Second World War.

Inside the barn is divided into two halves, each to one side of its great door, the left side being as one might expect—a mill, tools, grain bins, and so on. To the right would have been a hay store in days gone past, but now the space is hidden behind a wall of translucent plastic sheeting, floor-to-ceiling, and of such an expanse as to require individual sheets to be taped together, with a single flap in one corner being the only access to whatever lies beyond.

The mill is running, a substantial affair mounted in a robust wooden frame, some ten feet about the barn’s floor, fed by a huge hopper above, with a mound of freshly crushed barley beneath it.

A stab of the mill’s large red stop button ceases its operation, Shim grabbing a makeshift contraption from a peg—an outsized hard hat with a plastic visor, a hair dryer duct-taped to the side, and yet more duct tape attaching a dust filter at the back.

She pulls the whole thing over her wrapped head.

Next, a power pack, unplugged from its charger, clipped to her baggy trousers, and hooked up to the hair dryer’s power lead. A flip of the power pack’s switch and the modified dryer is sucking a steady flow of air through the filter, over the top of her head, and down the front of her face.

Shim grabs a slatted bushel basket and sets about scooping barley into it with her gloved hands, the helmet blowing the dust away.

A full measure and she chucks in two scoops of protein pellets from a small feed bin, making sure to mix the prepared portion thoroughly, before tipping the whole lot into an empty seed sack—there’s a large stack of them to hand, each labelled LEARSO-12.

With the heavy paper of the sack scrunched down, it is tossed unceremoniously onto a flatbed trolley, Shim then setting about the next.

* * *

Harnessed like a husky, Shim tows the trolley to the one remaining livestock shed, three sacks of feed on board. The trolley itself is heavy enough, making it hard work.

The shed’s central double doors are tall—a good fifteen feet high—and it’s the only way in, aside from the giant cattle gates to either side. A large metal bar latches the two doors shut. It’s just a matter of raising it—

The breeze catches one of the doors like a sail, jerking against a heavy-duty chain that snaps taut to restrain the movement. Shim works a ratchet to let the chain out, and with a gap just wide enough for the trolley, she hauls it in, tripping the ratchet’s counterweight to slam the door shut.

DOVECOTE

Dovecote Farm is old, dating back four hundred years or more, but not grand, reflecting its small size—a little over one hundred acres. The various outbuildings added over the centuries are of a high standard, being built principally from Devon stone quarried locally, and the farmhouse is of a good size, itself of cob construction, a lichen-encrusted stone chimney stack like some great obelisk holding it all up,