What do you think of when somebody mentions England’s countryside? Do you picture nice eccentric people in the Yorkshire Dales, as seen, say, in the TV series All Creatures Great and Small? In his debut novel, The Borrowed Hills, Scott Preston presents a very different part of England. Cumbria born and raised, Preston depicts it as a land where it’s either raining or foggy, where sheep farmers have to deal with sparse grazing grounds and bogs, where mountains loom over them and huge boulders block trails – in short, where the land is at best marginal. Sure, Cumbria is picturesque and tourists tramp through to see the Lake District. But beauty doesn’t make life easier for the upland farmers.
It’s 2001. Sheep are rotting with foot-and-mouth disease and inspectors are ordering farmers to put their flocks down. Steve Elliman, who narrates the novel, is a youngish farmer who’s seen his whole flock destroyed and buried. He has a side-hustle as a long-distance truck driver but he’s a farmer first.
Desperate for work, he puts himself in the hands of William Herne, bullying owner of much land, who has seen most of his flock killed but who has also hidden away some sheep he decided were not infected. But Herne is not satisfied with that. He cooks up a grand scheme. He contacts a bunch of criminals and arranges for them to rustle great numbers of healthy sheep from much further south in England. Elliman is one of the drivers and the crime is successful.
So far, so good. They get hundreds of healthy sheep, rip off their tags and replace them with new ones. But there’s a major snag. Once you put yourself in the hands of criminals, you never get rid of the criminals. They ask for more than one pay-off. Elliman’s house is invaded by two drug-dealing thugs who plan even more illegal activity. There are knives and guns. There is murder. Preston frames this in a context of casual violence. In such a bleak, rainy, foggy environment, it’s common for locals to get smashed in the pubs and start brawling. Elliman is goaded into taking on the local brawler champion. There are side issues in the tale. Elliman has a crush on Herne’s wife Helen and the feeling seems to be mutual; but the outcome isn’t what you expect.
Preston is at his best describing the land. When the rustled sheep are forced though mountain passes, we have what amounts to a minor epic as the drovers sometimes face gale-force winds, the sheep are often in peril of falling to their death off narrow mountain tracks, and the cold is always biting.
Less successful is the way much of the story is told. Having Steve Elliman give the first-person narration flattens him out as a character. Why does he so easily get caught up in criminality when he is first presented as an honest farmer? Is it just desperation for work or is Preston consciously employing the “unreliable narrator”?
The Borrowed Hills has a remarkably serene coda in which matters are sorted out years later, after the murders and rustling are over. The strong sense of a deprived backwater lingers.
The Borrowed Hills by Scott Preston (John Murray, $37.99) is out now.
