Face the Wind and Fly (7 page)

‘He’s researching his new book.’

Another grunt.

‘So what would you like to eat?’

‘Everything.’

She managed to produce the meal more or less without mishap – the eggs were hard and the toast slightly burnt, but things could have been much worse. Kate cleared the plates into the dishwasher and tidied her scarf. ‘I’ve got to go, love. I’m sure Dad’ll be back soon. You all right?’

‘Course.’

She picked up her briefcase and kissed the top of his head. Ninian flicked on the television and grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl. Kate said, ‘Bye, then.’

There was no response, not even a grunt.

Chapter Eight

When Kate arrived at the village hall, the table was already set up for the Council meeting. She hadn’t expected the additional rows of chairs behind the table, though, at the back of the hall. There were going to be observers and the chairs were already filling up. She spotted a woman from the tennis club and May and Jerry Nesbitt, the current tenants of Forgie House, among other familiar faces.

‘What do you think?’ she hissed at AeGen’s community liaison officer, Gail.

‘Shows interest.’

Kate disliked public speaking, even though she had to do it all the time. She looked around for clues about how the evening might go. There were three members of the Community Council already seated at the table. Frank Griffiths (who was chairing), a local farmer, and a lawyer, who she knew was on the board of the Forgie House Trust. As she took her place, two more women appeared.

One of them said, ‘Good evening,’ and smiled. ‘I’m Nicola Arnott. I’m head teacher at Summerfield Primary School.’

It was a warm smile. Kate shook her hand. ‘Hi. Nice to meet you.’

‘And this is Mary Tolen.’ Nicola drew the other woman forward.

‘Evenin’.’

Kate understood the importance of these committees. They might have no real decision-making powers, but she’d learned the lesson long ago that all politics is local and that an active Community Council had a strong influence, particularly on planning matters. Would the women be allies or foes? The next hour or so would tell.

‘Mrs Courtenay,’ Frank started formally when they were seated at the table, ‘why don’t you take a few minutes to address the Council?’

The manner of address unnerved her, so she sprang to her feet, sending her papers flying across the table. She had to spend an embarrassing minute collecting them again, and started shakily. She fingered her scarf and launched her speech, ‘Mr Chairman, members of Council—’

Then she was on home ground, sure of herself and her arguments, and everything began to flow.

‘What we are proposing is, of course, just our thoughts at the moment. This is the start of a consultation process in which you will be completely involved and your concerns discussed and, where possible, addressed ...’

Half way through her speech, she became aware of movement at the back of the hall. Distracted, she glanced across to the disturbance. It was Ibsen Brown, of all people, and Wellington, his paws sliding and scraping on the polished wood floor. She bit her lip. There was no hiding now.

‘... and where possible addressed,’ she continued as the nudging of chairs and the shuffling of feet died down again. ‘I’d like to outline our early thoughts for this site, then discuss some of the issues with which you might be concerned.’

She held the floor for ten minutes, then cut the talk dead. Better to allow time for questions and discussion than preach at people.

‘This proposal,’ Frank said, looking at her with ferocious intensity, ‘is an utter outrage. These turbines will be a blight on our landscape, they’ll kill our birdlife, ruin our moorland habitat and pollute our communities with the kind of noise you can’t turn off and can’t hide from. Every time we open our front doors, we’ll be staring at the things, and if it happens we can’t see them, we’ll still be able to hear them.’

‘It’s really a myth that—’

‘Don’t try to tell me they’re not noisy, because they most certainly are. I’ve heard of people whose lives have been made an utter misery with their whining and grinding.’

Stay calm and quote the science. She needed to establish her authority. All her training kicked into play.

‘It may have been the case,’ she said, putting both her hands on the table and leaning forward, ‘thirty years ago or so when wind turbines were in their infancy, that some were noisy. That is absolutely not true now. Gear boxes are next to silent—’

‘They still do that whoosh, whoosh.’

‘There is a small sound from the blades when you are close, if they are turning fast,’ Kate admitted, ‘but it’s generally much less than the noise of the wind itself. In any case, these turbines will be sited too far from any human habitation for the sound to be significant.’

She tried to read their faces. The Tolen woman was nodding. Frank was so flushed she began to worry whether he might have a seizure. Nicola Arnott was smiling slightly. The other faces were unreadable.

The lawyer said, ‘I understand these turbines are extremely inefficient.’ He glanced down at his notes. Trust a lawyer to have prepared. ‘According to my information, they only produce around thirty per cent of the power the manufacturers claim.’

‘A turbine labelled as one megawatt describes its optimum capacity – in other words, what it can produce when the wind is blowing strongly and steadily.’

‘But half the time they’re not turning at all.’

‘Sure, that’s why people think they’re inefficient. But we measure output over a year, not minute by minute, and a turbine’s annual output is entirely predictable.’

‘So—’

She had to be less technical. ‘Let’s use your car as an analogy, shall we? I’m guessing it’s capable of going at, what, a hundred and thirty miles an hour?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘But of course, you seldom drive it at that speed. Well,
never
, I hope, in Britain.’ This got a small laugh, as she’d hoped. ‘So your car is
capable
of going at that speed, but you probably drive it at speeds between thirty and seventy miles an hour normally. Does this mean it’s inefficient at doing what it’s designed to do? No. It gets you from A to B in the time you expect, given variables such as traffic and weather conditions, of course. And sometimes it stays in the garage.

‘Wind turbines are the same. We expect them to generate a certain amount of power over a year and that amount is what we plan for.’

The lawyer looked at his notes again. ‘But you can’t store the electricity either.’

‘No, you’re right, turbines don’t store electricity. What they do is feed power into the network.’

‘But surely, if it’s not windy when we need power most there’s no point, is there?’

Kate said patiently, ‘Ever since we established a national grid for our electricity, engineers have been managing what we call “spikes”. We can predict when some of these are going to come.’

‘The advertising breaks in the middle of the soaps,’ said Nicola Arnott with her ready smile.

‘Exactly.’ Kate flashed her a grin in return. ‘And half time in the big football matches and so on. Engineers have always managed these spikes very efficiently. I’ll be very happy to go through this with you, and we do have a leaflet—’ she picked one up and waved it, ‘—but briefly, there are certain kinds of power, like hydro and nuclear, we can feed in very quickly into the grid. But the point about
renewable
energy,’ she paused, to underline the importance of this point, ‘is that we need to feed it into the grid whenever we can to save our finite fuels.’

Kate paused and looked round. Time to wrap up. She drew a deep breath. ‘To put it at its most simple, we use renewable energy in the grid when it’s available and top it up with other kinds of power when we need to.’

 She could see that Frank was getting more and more wound up. She needed this Council – or a majority – to get behind her, or the Summerfield wind farm project was going to be extremely difficult to manage. She said, ‘Could I suggest that we ask Council members for their views?’

The farmer broke in eagerly, his ruddy face even ruddier. ‘I’m all for it. Could you tell us, Mrs Courtenay, a bit more about the Community Benefit Fund you mentioned earlier on?’

‘It’s exactly what it says on the tin. The Fund will be set up by AeGen for community projects. You’ll need a committee to manage and co-ordinate proposals and apply for the funding, but most sensible proposals are likely to benefit.’

‘How much money is there?’

‘Two and a half thousand pounds per megawatt hour of installed capacity.’

Mary Tolen whistled. ‘I’ve nae idea what that means, but it sounds like a lot of money tae me,’ she said.

‘It’s very generous. It could mean hundreds of thousands of pounds a year for your communities to spend.’

‘Blood money,’ Frank growled. ‘If you think you can buy us off by—’

‘Don’t be too hasty, Frank,’ said the lawyer. ‘Let’s hear all sides of the argument. Is this Fund just for the first year, Mrs Courtenay?’

Kate shook her head. ‘The Fund is for every year that the wind farm is operating. If we get planning permission for twenty-five years, the Fund will run for the same length of time. I have to say,’ she smiled warmly round the table, ‘that most communities are simply unable to spend all the money available to them.’

‘We’d be selling our birthright for a mess of pottage,’ Frank boomed.

‘I don’t think we should dismiss it,’ said the farmer.

Mary Tolen said, ‘What aboot we tak a wee vote, eh Frank? Get a feeling o’ the meetin’, like?’

‘I think it would be best if we take this evening as a sounding meeting only.’

‘Still, it wud be helpful to the lassie if she had some notion o’ our feelings,’ Mary persisted.

‘Very well,’ Frank agreed reluctantly. ‘In favour?’

Mary Tolen, Nicola Arnott and the farmer raised their hands. The lawyer sat on the fence by abstaining. Frank slammed shut his notebook. ‘I declare this meeting closed,’ he barked.

There were no thanks to Kate for her time. She started to bundle up her papers and glanced towards the back of the hall. Ibsen must have left because she couldn’t see him at all.

‘That was some performance.’

‘Oh!’ The voice right behind her made her jump. She whirled round. ‘Thanks, Ibsen.’

‘You certainly had me fooled.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You weren’t exactly honest with me, were you? You never told me you’d come up to Summerfield Law prospecting on behalf of AeGen.’

‘I came up for a walk. That was all.’

‘Hardly.’  Wellington stopped sniffing her and sat at his heels. Tonight’s tee shirt read, Don’t follow me, I’m lost too. Ibsen crossed his arms across the words so that all she could see was I’m lost. . She almost smiled. He said, ‘You seem very sure of yourself. About wind farms.’

‘I’m an engineer. This is my field. I
am
sure of myself.’

‘Pity you’re wrong.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You make it sound like putting monstrosities on top of Summerfield Law would be a good thing.’

‘This wind farm will generate enough—’

‘I know. You said. Enough electricity to power the homes in Summerfield and Forgie and half of Hailesbank. But you skipped a lot of pretty crucial questions.’

Kate fingered her scarf, trying to relax as the silk slid across her hand. So much for pre-empting attack by wearing red. ‘If I can help—  Any questions you have, I’d be delighted to answer.’ She turned away and started shovelling her papers into her briefcase in untidy wads.

‘There really is no answer, is there? The simple fact is they’ll wreck the natural landscape. No matter what you say about how efficient the damn things are or how you’ll plough money back into replanting, or make sure birds aren’t affected, they’ll still be there, ruining it all.’

‘Yes.’ Kate snapped her briefcase shut and turned to face him. ‘They’ll be there. But you’re wrong about the natural landscape, you know. Summerfield Law has been shaped by man for centuries. There’s the quarry on the north side. There’s the thick conifer plantation over half the hill. There’s the destruction of the natural habitat that’s been caused by sheep grazing on the other side. Not a lot is “natural”.’

‘That’s different.’

‘Is it? Why?’

He shook his head, his hyacinth-blue eyes glinting in the hard glare of the fluorescent lights. ‘You’re very good with words. But you’re still wrong.’

Kate’s cheeks burned. He might be subversively attractive, but Ibsen Brown’s views were entrenched and uninformed.

‘I’m sorry you think so,’ she snapped. ‘Any time you’d like more information, please do get in touch.’ She reached into her pocket and handed him her business card.

As she opened the front door of Willow Corner, she heard Andrew’s voice in his study. When the door banged closed, his voice stopped abruptly and a second later he appeared, smiling.

‘Hi darling, how did it go?’

‘Where’ve you been?’ It sounded petulant, but she was bruised and exhausted – not from talking about wind power, which was easy, but from the effort of having to keep control of her temper. ‘And who was that on the phone?’

He scooped her into his arms and her mood shifted a shade, from pitch black to merely inky. ‘Sorry I wasn’t home in time to cook,’ he murmured into her hair, his hand on the hollow of her back in the way that always stirred her.

She pulled away and headed for the kitchen. ‘I need a drink.’

He caught up with her and steered her solicitously towards a chair. ‘I’ll get it. You must be bushed. Wine?’

‘Whisky.’

‘Was it that bad?’

‘The usual kind of blinkered idiocy.’

‘Are you talking about Frank Griffiths, by any chance?’

Blue eyes performed a tango in her mind.
Not just Frank, no.
‘I know he’s Charlotte’s father, but honestly—’ Her voice tailed off in weary frustration. ‘Frank’s attitude is the worst kind of ignorance – a deliberate rejection of the facts. And sadly, there’s a lot of people round here ready to simply believe him.’

Like Ibsen Brown.

Andrew’s sleepy eyes were looking her, but she wondered if he was seeing her at all. ‘Andrew?’

The deep lids blinked and the eyes focused again. ‘People believe what it suits them to believe, Kate, you know that.’ So he had been listening. ‘Don’t worry too much. This is only the beginning. If you start fretting now you’ll be a mess by the time the consultation period’s finished.’

‘I suppose you’re right. Where were you, by the way? You didn’t say.’

‘I told you, I met with the Bishop. We spent the morning together and had lunch. He left me in his library, deep in piles of books. I’m sorry I wasn’t home for supper.’

‘But that was hours ago. You surely weren’t there all that time?’