Item 7, Any Other Business

The parish council met in the scout hut on the first Tuesday of the month, and on the first Tuesday of April there were forty-one people in it, which was thirty-six more than usual. Item 7 was the road. Margaret Hale, who had chaired the council for eleven years and had a way of tapping her pen that meant "we are running late," had put the road at item 7 on purpose. Items 1 through 6 were the minutes, the finances, the churchyard wall, the dog bin by the allotments, a report from the footpaths officer, and a letter from a resident about a hedge. She was hoping to get through them fast enough that the forty-one would still be awake for the road but too tired to be at their worst. It did not work. They got through the hedge in four minutes and then the room did something she'd only seen twice before, which was lean forward all at once. The road was the district council's idea. A "relief route." It would take the lorries off the high street and put them through the water meadows, and the village had been arguing about it since a leaflet came through every door in January. There were two camps and everyone knew who was in which. The high street was for it. The lanes were against. "Item 7," Margaret said. "The council has been asked for a formal response to the consultation. I'll take comments from the floor. Three minutes each, hands up, and I mean three." The first hand was Derek from the garage on the high street, who had a lorry mount the pavement outside his door in February and had the photo on his phone. Three minutes. He used them. The second was a woman from Mill Lane who Margaret didn't know, which was rare, and who had a folder. She had counted the skylarks. She had, she said, counted the skylarks in the meadow every April for nine years, and she had the numbers, and she wanted them minuted. Margaret minuted them. Then it went the way it always went. A man said "with respect" and then said something without any. Someone mentioned house prices and was booed, lightly, the way a village boos. Derek said the word "nimby" and the woman from Mill Lane said "I've lived here since 1979" and Derek said "I've lived here since I was born" and Margaret tapped her pen.

Forty minutes. She let it run forty minutes because if she'd stopped it at twenty they'd have said the council didn't listen, and if she let it run sixty they'd say the council couldn't run a meeting. Forty was the number. "Right," she said. "I've heard the room. The council will draft a response. I'm not going to pretend that response will make everyone happy. It'll say the village wants the lorries off the high street and the meadows protected and it'll ask the district how they propose to do both, because that's their job, not ours. Is there anyone here who doesn't want that sent?" Silence, which she took as no. "Item 8. Any other business." A man at the back said the swing in the play park was still broken. "Noted," said Margaret, and wrote it down, and it was the truest thing anyone had said all evening.