When I was a teenager/in my early twenties, there were two places I really, really wanted to visit. Greece was one, but as my finances didn’t stretch to anywhere near what it would cost, this was an ethereal dream, not realised until I was 65. I was determined to do something to celebrate this momentous year, and so I saved enough to go to Kefalonia, and it was wonderful.
My other place was Cornwall; more easily achievable, but not until I was in my late forties. The love of this county began when I studied John Betjeman for my English O-Level in the 60’s. The way he wrote about it was so evocative that even the seaside smells came across, and I can still remember some of the poems I had to learn. When I finally got there, it was to a cottage in Port Isaac, long before it became famous due to the Doc Martin TV series. I stood on the beach on my first morning there, watching the waves crash against the rocks, and thought that even if I didn’t know about the smugglers who frequented the coast with its hidden caves, I could imagine them battling the waves in the dead of night. The tears ran silently down my cheeks as I stood there, full of joy that at last I was in Cornwall.
Since then I have had many holidays there, including my honeymoon with my second husband on The Lizard, and its charm never fades. The Farm at the Edge of the World is another of the books on my list that I received for Christmas, and it was so worth the wait.
It is set in 2014 and also during the second World War. Lucy is a neonatal nurse; she flees to her childhood home, the farm, to escape the trauma of her marriage break-up and a near-fatal mistake she almost made at work. She arrives to find that her mother, Judith, and her brother, Tom, who run the farm, are troubled about the finances. The farm is losing money, & neither wants to take up the option offered by Judith’s brother Richard to sell and have the place developed into holiday cottages. Neither does Maggie, Judith’s mother who, at the grand age of nearly 90, has spent her life on the farm. Hints are given as to other reasons why Maggie doesn’t want to leave, and gradually the story emerges.
Will and his sister Alice are sent to the farm from London during the second World War, arriving pale and undernourished. They are expected to pull their weight, and before long Will develops from a skinny 13-year-old into a young man bronzed and muscled, and Maggie, the daughter on the farm, develops from a tomboy into a curvy young woman. The two of them have always got on well, having an easy relationship based on banter and a love of the area, swimming in the sea when time allows.
When they both realise that their friendship has become something more, the inevitable happens; one night in the barn they surrender themselves to each other, and a different future emerges in their minds. Maggie has a sort of understanding with Edward, a local young man who has gone off to war hoping that she will be there for him on his return, but Maggie knows that what she feels for Will far outstrips what she feels for Edward.
When Alice tells Maggie’s mother Evelyn that she has seen Will & Maggie kissing, Evelyn has Will sent off to another farm out of harm’s way. Maggie soon realises that her one night with Will has resulted in pregnancy. She manages to conceal it till the baby is born, a month early. She gives birth in her bedroom with the help of Joanna, who works on the farm, and Alice, and a baby boy is born.
When Evelyn, who was out, returns, she is horrified, frightened of the stigma which will be attached not just to Maggie but to the family. Alice is deputed to take baby Will to the local orphanage run by nuns, leaving Maggie bereft. She has had no letters from Will, and thinks that his head has been turned by a land girl and has forgotten her, not knowing – as neither do we till much later in the book – that her mother has intercepted the letters he has sent.
Maggie has never given up hope that she will find either Will or his son, or that one of them will find her. Alice, now in her seventies and dying from cancer, arrives at the farm to stay in one of the cottages, hoping to put right the situation, which turns out to be more complex than we were aware of.
This is a love story, a tale of hope and determination and perseverance, and loyalty to people and place. I will not tell you how the fate of the farm turns out, or if Maggie ever finds her long-lost love or his son; I will only say that this a story worth reading, un-put-downable, with characters with whom one can empathise and the most evocative descriptions of Cornwall.
ABOUT THE BOOK
1939, and Will and Alice are evacuated to a granite farm in north Cornwall, perched on a windswept cliff. There they meet the farmer's daughter, Maggie, and against fields of shimmering barley and a sky that stretches forever, enjoy a childhood largely protected from the ravages of war.
But in the sweltering summer of 1943 something happens that will have tragic consequences. A small lie escalates. Over 70 years on Alice is determined to atone for her behaviour - but has she left it too late?
2014, and Maggie's granddaughter Lucy flees to the childhood home she couldn't wait to leave thirteen years earlier, marriage over; career apparently ended thanks to one terrible mistake. Can she rebuild herself and the family farm? And can she help her grandmother, plagued by a secret, to find some lasting peace?
This is a novel about identity and belonging; guilt, regret and atonement; the unrealistic expectations placed on children and the pain of coming of age. It's about small lies and dark secrets. But above all it's about a beautiful, desolate, complex place.
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