Homecoming (24 page)

‘I can’t afford . . .’ Joe says.

‘Don’t worry about that. I’m going to take care of it.’

‘I’ve done a terrible thing.’

‘It’s not your fault, all this, dad. Could’ve happened to anyone. Happens all the time.’

‘No, not this. I’ve done a terrible thing. To Eric.’

‘Well, we’ll talk about that later. Let’s get you in and we’ll find a way through it. Where’s mum?’

‘She’s seeing to the ewes in the barn. There’s still some that could come good. That look well, I mean.’

‘And Max?’

‘Arh, you don’t know about Max,’ Joe says, struggling to stand while still holding the lamb. Bartholomew can see how stiff he is in the joints. ‘The baby,’ Joe is saying.

‘Mum told me last night, on the phone. Where is he though?’

‘No one knows. He’s not worked a day on the farm this last week or so.’

‘Come on,’ says Bartholomew, over the rain that’s getting heavier and the sky lowering in a great grey thumb smudge. He puts an arm around Joe and escorts him towards the car. ‘I might as well drive you both back,’ he says. ‘I have to bring the car round anyway.’

‘I’ll need to nurse this one,’ Joe says, looking down at the lamb that’s loose over his palm. ‘There’s not much fight left in him.’

‘Best not get too attached, in case.’

‘That’s not a way round it,’ says Joe. ‘You get attached whether you like it or not.’

When they reach the car, Bartholomew goes to the driver door and opens it, expecting Joe to make for the passenger seat. But instead he opens the rear door – behind the driver’s – and slides onto the back seat with the lamb on his lap.

Bartholomew looks at him for a moment, sitting on the back seat like a day-tripper, with his grey hair blown about, small and hunched and expectant.

Joe waits for Bartholomew to take him home.

The orange flames of the gas fire rise and lower within its silver cage – like sentinels, thinks Bartholomew, guarding the room. Joe lies on the sofa, lightly snoring. The lamb is splayed on his chest. It sleeps too. Ann has placed a blanket over Joe’s legs and over the bottom half of the lamb.

‘You used to sleep on his chest like that,’ she says, ‘when you were new.’

She and Bartholomew are leaning in at the doorway, looking at Joe and the lamb.

‘It’s good he’s sleeping,’ he says.

‘I’m going to make up another bottle for that lamb,’ she says, and she walks off down the corridor to the kitchen.

They both take up their seats at the kitchen table, taking sips of the tea she’d made them earlier, when he’d first brought Joe back.

‘I think I should go and find Eric. We need help with all this. Dad can’t take any more.’

‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she says, and he sees her well up, then swallow it down. She folds a tea towel briskly on her lap, smoothing each square with her palm. ‘I doubt Eric’ll be minded to do owt for Joe right now, love. Not now.’

‘Why not?’

‘Joe, he’s been . . . Well, he lost it a bit, last night. Took it out on Eric. It’s a wonder those two put up with us at all.’

‘I could still talk to him. And where’s Max? Shouldn’t we find him?’

‘I’ve been trying his phone all morning,’ says Ann. ‘No answer.’

‘I’ll call Primrose and ask her.’

‘No,’ says Ann quickly. ‘No, don’t call Primrose.’

‘Why not?’

‘He and Primrose, they’re not . . . It’s not right between ’em.’

‘We’ve got Adrian coming today, have we?’

Ann nods.

‘And Tal and Jake can pitch in,’ he says. ‘I’ll cover the cost.’

‘If you want Eric, you’ll likely find him at the club in Lipton. He’s there most afternoons. Drives Lauren mad.’

Bartholomew pulls up outside Lipton Conservative Club and parks in a space next to Eric’s Micra. When he gets out, he sees the crumpled tail-light and the deep white scar that runs along the paintwork, usually pristine. He pads along the carpeted hallway and the door to the lounge squeaks as he pulls it towards him.

‘Eric?’ he says to a figure who has grown rounder and greyer since he last saw him. Eric is standing in a group of four or five other men. He looks at Bartholomew but there is no tight smile or raised pint. Eric’s face is dark and slack.

‘It’s me, Bartholomew,’ he says, thinking Jesus, are they all going senile?

‘I know who ye are, man.’

There is mumbling from the other men, who shuffle away leaving Eric and Bartholomew alone together. Eric would normally buy him a pint, slap him on the back and talk to him with the affection of an uncle. Instead, Bartholomew feels as if shame itself has walked into the room at his back.

‘It’s dad. He’s . . .

‘That bastard scraped my car,’ says Eric.

‘He’s really suffering Eric. If you’d seen what’s happening on the farm . . . He really scraped your car? Why?’

‘Do I look like I know?’

‘We need your help.’

‘I’ve helped him enough, and look where it’s got me. No, I’ll not help him with owt.’

‘We’ll pay for the car.’

‘Insurance will pay for the car.’ Eric holds him with a hard stare, then says, ‘Look son, I’m sad for him. There’s nothing worse – I had a bad lambing one year and it did me in. Took me years to get over it. But I can’t help him. I’m toxic for him. He can’t see past it these days.’

‘I don’t understand it, Eric.’

‘No, well. He’s a proud man, and I don’t blame him for that, I suppose.’

‘I don’t know what they’re going to do, Eric. They’ll have to sell up – they’ll make a terrible loss on the lambs. They’ll be lucky if they can pay off the loan. I don’t want to see them renting some hovel and mum taking cleaning jobs and dad caretaking, having to scrimp. Not at their age.’

‘Arh, that’s a bad lot,’ says Eric. ‘I wouldn’t wish them ill, your folks, much as things have been awkward lately.’

Eric rocks almost imperceptibly on his heels. Bartholomew takes it as a good sign. ‘You’ve always been like an uncle to me,’ he says.

Eric smiles now. He rocks back fulsomely and jangles his keys in his pocket. ‘I’ll get you a pint, son.’

They sit at a table in a corner of the room.

‘Course, Joe didn’t even want the farm to start with,’ Eric says, licking the foam off his top lip.

Bartholomew is eating a packet of cheese-and-onion crisps. ‘How d’ye mean?’

‘Well, it never came natural to him,’ says Eric. ‘It were Brian – his older brother, did you meet Brian?’

‘Died before I was born.’

‘Well, it were Brian who was the natural, not Joe. I remember watching him catch a sheep, calm as you like. That ewe practically ran into his arms. Me and Joe, we were flailing about, hurling ourselves after them.’ Eric is laughing and then begins coughing. ‘’Scuse me,’ he says, with his fist to his mouth. ‘Joe’s dad – did you never think it were funny, that his name was Eric, too? – he’d shout at Joe, humiliate him.’

‘He always seemed a nice old buffer, gramps.’

‘Had a mean temper, that man.’

‘Why did Brian not take over the farm then?’

‘There was some sort of falling-out,’ says Eric. ‘Brian just upped and left and your dad, he was left to pick up the pieces. Well, Ann’ll tell you more about it than I can, but it was never Joe’s passion, much as he’d have you think it now. He wanted other things from life. But Eric – Eric was one of those men you didn’t say no to, however much you wanted to. Poor Joe, he was sort of stuck with it.’

‘No wonder he resented me going off and doing my own thing.’

‘He was always right proud of you. Talked about your garden centre all the time.’

‘We shouldn’t talk about him as if he were dead.’

‘How’s he doing – really?’ Eric asks.

‘He’s lying on the sofa cuddling a lamb.’

They drink their pints silently for a while, Eric smacking his lips and saying ‘Arh’.

‘What would you have me do?’ he asks Bartholomew.

‘Help us bring in the good lambs. There’s a-hundred-and-fifty-odd that are still to labour and mum thinks they’re well and will go to term. We need to keep the farm in good shape if there’s to be an auction – give them the best chance of clearing enough money for a house. Max is on the drink by the sound of it. No one’s seen him for days.’

‘He’s fallen foul of Sheryl so I’ve heard. She gets her claws into you, there’s no escape.’

‘They were making eyes when I was up at Christmas,’ says Bartholomew. ‘Primrose must be racked about it.’

‘I don’t know about this, Claire,’ says Primrose, pulling at her bra straps. ‘It’s too small.’

‘No it’s not,’ says Claire. She pulls the top down, jimmying it over Primrose’s back. She adjusts it on Primrose’s shoulders. ‘I think it’s caught on the side.’

She fiddles with a zip which is gaping, just above Primrose’s waist. ‘I don’t want to . . . catch your . . . skin. There!’

‘Ow!’ Primrose squeals.

‘Keep still,’ says Claire. She attempts to stand back in the tiny cubicle, then returns to Primrose’s shoulder, where they look at the reflection in the mirror together.

Primrose’s wide arms bulge out of the chiffon top, her sloping shoulders unable to hold the straps. She is sweating and the inner lining of the top is itchy.

‘Best not go near any naked flames,’ Primrose says.

At the waist, the top puckers and ruches. Her breasts swell out making the fabric thin. The pattern is an eye-bruising smear of purple and yellow flowers.

‘I hate it,’ says Primrose.

Claire rests her forehead on Primrose’s shoulder. ‘Oh Prim.’

‘What?’ she says. ‘Oh come off it Claire. My tits look like two footballs in a string bag.’

‘And why is that such a bad thing?’

‘Footballs? You’d want your tits to look like footballs? Are you saying you’d go out in this?’

‘Alright, no, I wouldn’t. You look a sight. All I’m saying is, showing off your assets isn’t such a bad thing. I’m just trying to get you out of those Asda jeans and the Sweatshirt of Doom.’

‘I love that sweatshirt.’

‘I rest my case. Will you let me go and find something else to try on? Please? I won’t be long.’

Primrose sees the blue curtain on the cubicle fall as Claire disappears.

They’ll go to the Crown again tonight, she thinks, as they have been on Tuesdays and Thursdays and especially on the weekends when it fizzes with chatter and the jukebox and people she doesn’t know. All the weeks since February have seemed to speed up in Claire’s company, in the bright little home where Claire straightens Primrose’s hair, tries out make-up on her (it is a revelation, Primrose can’t deny it); where they tackle puzzle after puzzle in the mornings in their dressing gowns, with bacon sandwiches to the side and the telly on – puzzles of ancient maps, circus clowns, country scenes, bowls of fruit. They chat about the people they grew up with, the books they’re reading (Claire has introduced Primrose to thrillers with raised gold lettering and she’s not given Julian Bridgewater a second glance since); the new hairdressers in Lipton and what it has to offer (half-price highlights – Claire won’t stop nagging).

Claire had told Primrose about her mother, the black cloud that had descended after her younger brother was born. How her mother didn’t get out of bed from one day to the next and the baby screaming and screaming. And her dad walking her to school, grim-faced.

‘Is that why you’re rescuing me?’ Primrose asked.

‘You don’t beat about the bush, do you, Primrose?’

Primrose doesn’t talk about the little bean. She doesn’t want anyone saying it was for the best, what happened, even though she’s thought it herself.

She crosses her arms in front and pulls the top over her head, struggling with it when it reaches her ribcage. She fights it off over her head and her hair stands up with the static and she throws the top onto the floor.

The last time she’d been home, she’d noticed his clothes piled high in the laundry corner. She is alternating, these days, between Claire’s and home, somehow managing not to cross Max’s path. She’d looked down on the pile, thinking, ‘He’s really counting his chickens if he thinks I’m tackling that lot.’ But then she’d found herself putting a load in, as if part of her still had the urge to care for him. As if he needed looking after. She had put one of the T-shirts up to her face and grimaced at the smell – beer sweat mingled with human grime and above it a sickly smell like cheap perfume.

‘What do you think?’ says Claire. She is holding up a hanger and on it is a blouse – dark brown, with a black pattern on it of flowers that’s only just visible. It is loose, sort of billowy, but a little bit see-through.

‘I love it!’ says Primrose. ‘Give it here.’

Primrose puts a hand up to her hair and pats it. It lies like a silky curtain down the side of her face. She shifts her head and feels it swish and tickle. She is wearing her new blouse and new black patent boots. (‘Fuck-me boots,’ Claire had said; Primrose had frowned, ‘Claire! Shush!’ and Claire had said, ‘Oh don’t be such a prude.’) She’d bought them at Lipton market and they hurt like hell.

She sits on the outskirts of a group – a big round table of men that Claire’s befriended. Primrose’s too-small stool is set back and she sips her pint of cider and black silently. One of the men has been silent too, and he sits beside Primrose, both of them looking into the circle where jokes are exchanged. Neither is quite engaged in the banter before them and Primrose is aware of his large outline in the blurred periphery of her vision. After an hour, the man gets up and she feels a moment of panic that he is leaving.

‘Would you like another drink?’ says the man.

‘Oh yes please,’ she says. ‘A cider and black.’

‘Right you are.’

When he returns the silence resumes more ghastly than before because Primrose is aware of the spectre of him leaving altogether. She forces herself to say something.

‘Do you work around here?’ she says, not fully turning her head towards him.

‘A little way off usually – over down Malton way – but I’m doing a job in Lipton with Frank over there.’

‘What sort of job?’

‘I’m rewiring a house. Frank’s a builder and he brings me in to do the electrics.’