Homecoming (25 page)

‘Is it a big job?’ she asks.

‘Not so big,’ he says. ‘New junction boxes, light fittings, a heating system, the ol’ heated towel rail.’ He raises his eyebrows at that. Nice eyebrows. Dark and bushy.

‘Are you going for a ring circuit or just updating the spur and radial?’

He leans back. ‘Whoah, are you an electrician too?’

‘I dabble,’ says Primrose, blushing. ‘I’ve mostly given it up these days. I used to love it.’

‘Love it? Why?’

‘I don’t know really,’ she says. She is telling the truth. ‘I used to take things apart as a kid. The most recent thing I did was install parabolic aluminised reflectors in the pigpens.’

He nods. She cannot tell if he’s impressed or whether it has put him off.

At the end of the night, she says goodbye to him. She wonders if that is a look of disappointment she sees in his face, that she is leaving. She already can’t wait for them to go to the Crown again, to straighten her hair and put on some mascara and hope to see him again, and even the hoping seems to make life more zippy.

Claire loops her arms through Primrose’s and they march drunkenly around the corner to Claire’s flat, where Primrose now has a stash of overnight things in the spare room.

‘You might as well move in,’ says Claire.

‘You’ve had too much to drink.’

‘Nahhhhh!’ says Claire, over-loud. ‘You might as well. You’re here most of the time anyway. And I could do with the rent.’

Ann is feeding Baby Lamb. She sits at the kitchen table with the animal on her knee. Its bony bottom digs into her lap and the position is awkward – not like with babies, who love to be cradled, looking up at you. Lambs don’t like to be up-ended to the world. Their undersides are vulnerable. They like always to be able to run away. White drops slip into Baby Lamb’s upturned mouth, which looks like the gaping toe of a black boot. It licks the teat, fast and furious, and white liquid spatters onto its nose and seeps out of the edges of its mouth.

She hears the kitchen door open behind her and Bartholomew lays her keys on the table.

‘You were a long time,’ she says, lifting her head up but unable to see him.

‘I had a chat with Eric. Where’s dad?’

‘Asleep in his bed, where he should be. How was Eric?’

‘Cross at first, understandably. But he’s a kind man. He’ll help us.’

Ann closes her eyes in relief. Then gives the lamb a squeeze. ‘This one’s been named Baby Lamb. It’s official.’

Bartholomew has sat down opposite her, his coat still on.

‘You not stopping?’ she says.

‘Baby Lamb?’

‘I know. Wretched, isn’t it?’

‘Like the Diana Ross song?’

‘You what?’

‘Baby Lamb, my Baby Lamb, I need you, oh how I need you,’ he sings.

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Eric told me all about uncle Brian.’

Ann says nothing. She is looking down at Baby Lamb.

‘And about gramps. I never knew dad didn’t want the farm. That gramps made him.’

‘I don’t know as it were that cut and dried,’ she says. ‘Eric – he was just one of those men who made you bend to his will. Hard as nails, that man. I remember they never had any heating on in this house – I used to die of the cold when I came here to stay. Used to beg Joe to say something but he
never
would because Eric always made him feel he wasn’t tough enough.’

‘Did you ever want it? The farm, I mean.’

‘I wanted your dad,’ she says. ‘And the farm came with him. And I wanted you boys. I got what I wanted.’

‘But you could have gone off together – done your own thing. Made your own life.’

She can feel herself bristle. ‘There you go again, Bartholomew. Always wanting us to be better than we are. Always looking down on us from such a great height.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that, honestly, mum. I’m just sorry for him – that he didn’t have the freedom I had.’

‘Well, we didn’t do so badly,’ says Ann. Baby Lamb has stopped feeding and is trying to right itself in her arms. She tips it off her lap and it scrambles away, out of the room.

‘He’s going to shit everywhere now,’ she says. ‘We’d best keep him in the kitchen. Go and get him will you son? I’m tired.’

Bartholomew goes out in search of Baby Lamb and Ann rubs her forehead. He comes back in and she hears the kitchen door shut behind her. He puts the lamb in one of the dog baskets and sits back down.

‘Why did you never tell me all this – about dad?’

‘You were never interested, son,’ she says, sighing. Impatient. ‘You never asked.’

‘What would he have liked to do?’

‘I don’t think he ever really asked himself that. He never had choices – not like you. He was into geology, when I first met him. Used to read books about tectonic plates and the continental drift. Bored me rigid with it. But there was no chance of him studying or leaving, so he put his back into it.’

‘I just find it so sad,’ Bartholomew says.

‘Good god, Bartholomew. It’s just ordinary.’ She gets up and stands at the sink with her back to him so he can’t see her face. ‘And anyway, the farm gave us a lot of happiness, more after Eric died, I’ll grant you. We loved it when you two were little. It was a wonderful place for bairns to grow up in. You were
always
outside with Joe, riding on the tractors or climbing in the hay barn or feeding the animals. That was Joe’s happiest time, I think. Children – especially boys – need the outdoors.’

‘I s’pose,’ he says.

‘You don’t remember it like that?’ she asks, and she sees the man there, at the kitchen table.

‘I don’t really remember it at all,’ he says. ‘Does anyone really remember being a child? I mean, it’s not like there’s times that I could bring back and tell you how old I was or what we were doing. There’s the odd memory – like dad walking me over the field and telling me about sowing and harvesting. I can remember his voice and looking down at the stubble and my blue wellington boot treading on it.’

She nods.

‘But I think it’s with me more when I’m at the garden centre and I’m planting or watering. I think it’s there – in my work.’

‘You’ll be sad to see it go,’ she says. ‘As sad as us.’

She sees tears in his eyes, sitting unburst on the rim.

‘I’m so sorry mum,’ he says. ‘About not being here, not helping you. I didn’t want to face it – I don’t know why.’

She goes over to him, cups his head against her body and kisses his hair.

‘I’ve been awful to Ruby,’ he says, breaking out of her arms and looking up at her as if she might be able to absolve him. ‘I’ve been cruel to her.’

‘Well,’ she says. ‘You’ll need to make it up to her then.’

‘She’ll never take me back. Why would anyone want me, mum? I’m so . . .’ He shakes his head and then looks up at her exactly as he did when he was five and she’d say to him, ‘I could eat you up I love you so.’

‘I think you’re about ready, son. Once you feel you’d be lucky if someone put up with ye – then you stand a chance of making it work.’

He lies in the single bed in the back bedroom. He can hear Joe snoring and his mother in the bathroom. He wonders what Ruby is doing, who she’s with. He gets out of bed and picks his jeans up off the floor. Feels in the baggy pocket for his phone and climbs back into bed with it. He lies, holding the phone above his face and scrolls through the inbox. So old, they are now. Down the list he goes, remembering.

He hasn’t recognised it before – the thing that always seemed to him like hectoring. He was so busy avoiding her pressure, that he didn’t see it for what it was.

He presses ‘Create Message’.

Within seconds his phone vibrates. She never delayed in replying. She was never out of range. His heart is thudding as he sees the little envelope sign.

Bartholomew stands outside Winstanton Estates on the high street. In the window is a huge flat screen, rotating property details, and below it, among the screen’s trailing wires, is a row of potted orchids. He’d been to the café in search of her, of course – yesterday, as soon as he’d driven back from Yorkshire. But the girl who straightened from loading the dishwasher wasn’t Ruby. It was Magda, from the Ukraine. Ruby had gathered up all her days owing, she told him, and taken a break. Wouldn’t be back at work for a fortnight. ‘Got new place. Needs very clean. I no say more.’

So here he is. Desperate times, desperate measures. Inside, he can see two young men in suits sitting behind desks, one on the phone, the other on his computer. Chancers who’ve stumbled on the good times, Bartholomew thinks. He pushes open the door.

‘Name’s Wayne, how can I help?’ says Suit One, not rising but holding out his hand across the desk to Bartholomew.

‘Actually, I was wondering if Dave Garside was here.’

The two men shoot a glance at one another.

‘You go, Gary,’ says Wayne, and Gary immediately gets up, walking to the back of the shop, his tasselled loafers sliding on the laminate floor, his suit jacket flicking out behind him.

Wayne answers a phone that has begun to ring. ‘Winstanton Estates. Yep, yep, no, that one’s gone. Went for a hundred thou over the asking price. I know. Four days after it came on.’

Dave Garside emerges from the back of the shop, following Gary. He catches sight of Bartholomew and rolls his eyes.

‘This better be good,’ he says, ‘I’ve come off my break.’

‘I thought you went to Ruby’s for your break,’ says Bartholomew. Not a brilliant strategy, when he’s after Dave’s help.

‘On holiday isn’t she?’ says Dave.

Wayne has ended his call. ‘’Ere, Gary,’ he says, nodding at Dave and Bartholomew. ‘Lovers’ tiff.’

Gary smiles to himself as he sheafs through papers on his desk.

‘This your boyfriend, Dave?’ says Wayne. ‘You going to introduce us?’

‘Back in your cave Wayne,’ says Dave.

‘Oooh!’ says Wayne, holding up an imaginary handbag with two hands. But then he trails off. Gary laughs, more supportively this time.

Bartholomew is bewildered. Boyfriend?

‘I need to see Ruby,’ he says. ‘It can’t wait a fortnight, really it can’t. It’s really important, but you see I, I don’t know . . . I don’t know where she lives.’

‘I don’t think you’d be her number one choice of caller right now,’ says Dave.

‘I just want to explain, to talk.’

‘Look,’ says Dave, ‘you’ve really put her through hell. I don’t think she’d appreciate me giving out her address. Sorry mate. I can tell her you were looking for her when I see her.’

‘I really need to see her, Dave. I’ve fucked everything up.’

‘Well, like I say,’ Dave says – and he’s a big man, standing taller than Bartholomew – ‘we can’t give out personal contact details I’m afraid. I can pass on a number.’

He turns to feel for a post-it pad on Wayne’s desk. ‘Would you like to write down your details?’

‘No, she’s got my number. She hasn’t answered my calls.’

‘Well, p’raps she doesn’t want to see you then. Now if that’s all –’

Dave’s body is angled towards the back of the shop.

Bartholomew says nothing, can’t think of an argument in his favour, and Dave strides away, disappearing through the back door.

What now? Bartholomew is thinking, his hand on the door’s handle.

‘Here, Gary,’ he hears Wayne saying, rather theatrically, as he’s about to pull on the door, ‘has that new tenant – Miss Dalton – settled her rent for this month?’

Bartholomew stops, his back to the room.

‘What, Miss R. Dalton, of 43 The Vale, you mean?’ says Gary, over-enunciating. ‘I don’t know Wayne. I’ll check.’

Bartholomew pulls the glass door, fast, using all his weight, and steps out onto the street.

He stands outside a grand double-fronted house, the traffic roaring behind him and rings the bell. He steps back and waits.

Nothing.

He rings the doorbell again. To his right is a broad bay window, so clean it is all reflection of sunlight and tree. He presses his head up to the glass, cupping his eyes so he can see inside. There is a pale-grey button-back sofa and on it a book, splayed open. He recognises one of Ruby’s blankets over the back of the sofa and one of her mugs on the side table. He is shocked that she has settled into a place he’s never seen before, a new life he doesn’t know about. It is neat – he can see the Hoover stripes on the carpet. He steps back and takes out his mobile phone, the millionth time he’s stared at the small screen since he’d received her text, but it never vibrates into life, except with the word ‘Mum’.

It wasn’t like her – it was so terse. And then there were all his calls, which she hadn’t answered. That wasn’t like her, either. This person he loves has become a stranger to him.

He tries the door one last time but without much hope. He looks at his watch. 9.30 a.m. Should’ve been at work an hour ago. He walks down the steps. Defeated so soon. He approaches his bike where it leans against the peeling front wall, then stops. He reaches into his pannier for a scrap of paper and a pen.

 He pushes it through the letter box and cycles away.

Ruby throws her cigarette onto the ground – her third of the morning and it’s only 9.30 a.m. – and grinds down on it with the toe of her plimsoll. A shaft of watery April sun slants low across the scant little back yard and warms her face.

She thinks she should go back to her book, develop that air of poise, but she’s read the same paragraph several times without the words forming any meaningful pathway into her brain. So she’s been pacing, room to room, another Nescafé; another cigarette; taking out her mobile phone which has registered all his missed calls. His text had thrilled her, then infuriated her, then saddened her and then all three over and over again. She had stopped herself from following up her masterful hammer blow of a response – she wanted it to resonate, like a dagger to his heart. At the same time, stopping herself from sending more text messages or answering his calls was a personal agony. But she stood firm: striking up a dialogue would be tantamount to an overthrow. And anyway, where was he now? That message – so urgent and passionate – had been nothing more than a whistle in the wind. Where
was
he now? And where were the flowers? His trusty steed seemed to have developed a limp.
Typical
. It was never the way it was in films.

She hurries inside, through the back door and into the kitchen which smells of lavender floor cleaner. She has stopped smoking inside since she’s been cleaning the place up these last weeks, doesn’t like to sully the lovely starchy smells of laundry and furniture polish. Another Nescafé, and then my book, she thinks, peeping through to the lounge where the spring sun is warming the room through its broad windows. It has annoyed her beyond measure, the effect of his text, because she’s been sad for three months and then, with that message, something within her became rectified, as if she’s been righted just because he has righted her in his mind. And how pathetic was that, after weeks and weeks of crying? It was a terrible thing to realise how much one existed in the mind of another person, how much love – or was it good opinion? – could demolish or resurrect. To be lovable – wanted, appreciated – it was everything. And yet it was no more controllable than the weather. She feels as if she’s been in Siberia and now, with one text, she was back in the sunny uplands, only independent now she can feel his gaze. Is that all that exists? His version of me?

She carries her mug across the hall to return to the sofa and in the doorway to the living room stops, and steps backwards. There on the mat inside the front door is a folded piece of paper. She picks it up and opens it. He has been here. At her front door.

‘Looks great, Leonard,’ he says, aware of how much ground he has to make up. Guilt – it seems to be everywhere, in every corner of his life. They are standing at the lower boundary, looking up towards the warehouse. The view is a myriad of paths, white with new gravel, which are bordered by greying oak troughs.

‘And I’ve started off the annuals in the cold frame.’

‘I can see,’ says Bartholomew.

‘The grasses are coming on, too. I thought I’d do a whole border of grasses. They look great with the astrantias and alliums but there’s something about a single variety all running together. Just seems to have more impact.’

‘How’ve you managed all this by yourself? You’ve done so much.’

‘Worked the weekends, stayed late,’ says Leonard. He still sounds huffy, but can’t help wanting to show his work to his boss for approval. ‘Once you’re into it, you can’t stop,’ Leonard is
saying
.

‘Those spring troughs are amazing, Len,’ says Bartholomew, and they both look at the display – a series of star magnolias, underneath them pots of euphorbia and bleeding hearts. Leonard has arranged a simple palette – white and green – but gathered in such swathes so that the euphorbia form a thick ribbon of lime and the stellatas meld overhead in a canopy of loose flowers like torn tissues and then the white dicentras, arching with their little bells.

‘I’m sorry I left you in the lurch,’ says Bartholomew and he notices Leonard shifting awkwardly. ‘It’s an important time.’

‘Yes, well.’

‘What happened about all those orders for accessories, you know, what I said a couple of months back – the toadstools?’

‘Never got round to it,’ says Leonard. ‘S’pose I got waylaid.’

‘Thank god.’

‘Made a decision about selling then?’ says Leonard. Bartholomew can see he can’t bear to look at him. He is stiff with nerves.

‘I’m not selling, Leonard. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was like that. There was stuff going on at home.’

Leonard shifts again foot to foot. Bartholomew turns away to pick off some dried leaves from a stem.

‘How are the trousers working out for you?’ asks Bartholomew.

‘Oh they’re magic,’ says Leonard. ‘You just wash them, and they’re good to go. No ironing required. I might order some more.’

‘Well, I probably owe you a few days off.’

Leonard is hopping now. He taps his watch. ‘It’s that time,’ he says. ‘I shall pick up the paper and venture in, if it’s all the same to you.’

Some things never change, Bartholomew thinks, as he watches Leonard hurrying up the main path to the warehouse. He glances at the entrance gate, where his eye is caught by a pea-green coat. Ruby’s hair is glowing in the sunshine. The sight of her makes his body quicken. She hasn’t seen him yet, and he watches her familiar form, grown strange over three months of separation. He is filled with desire and reluctance. Some part of him – and not a small part – would like to remain where he is, full of unrequited longing, unblemished by the real person. He is not sure he can absorb any more guilt. But he walks briskly up the main path towards her. He has a hand over his eyes and is squinting when he says, ‘Hello, stranger.’ He smiles at her. She doesn’t smile back.

‘You left me a note,’ she says. Her face muscles are barely moving. She looks haughty and elegant. She is so pretty, her face like home to him.

‘I’m glad you came.’

‘Yes, well, here I am, then.’

‘Can I make you a tea?’

‘No, you’re alright.’

‘Um, shall we go and sit on that bench?’ he says, pointing the way with one arm, the other hovering over her back. He daren’t touch her. How have I got us here, he thinks, to this impossible place?

She sits rigid, looking ahead at the plants, and he sits beside her, his body turned towards hers. Above them, a white cherry is in blossom, its nodding flowers lit by the new sun.

‘It’s looking well,’ she says, nodding towards the beds and paths.

‘Thanks. Mostly Leonard’s work.’

‘What did you want to say?’

‘I don’t know where to begin,’ he says. He pauses. They sit, for a moment, looking out together. Then he turns to her, saying, ‘Who are you going out with?’

‘I’d say that wasn’t your ideal starting block.’

Her eyes are steely – sad-looking. They’ve lost their usual Ruby sense of amusement.

‘No, sorry Ruby. I’m really sorry, about what happened.’

‘Yes, well. Water under the bridge now,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a new place. Fresh start.’

‘I saw.’

‘It’s better – I feel better. I don’t think we were suited, to be honest.’

‘Oh don’t say that,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what got into me at Christmas. I was cutting myself off. There was stuff happening at home.’

‘Well, like I say,’ she says, ‘there’s no need to worry about that now. We’ve both moved on, ha’n’t we?’

‘But I do worry about it,’ he says. ‘I mean, I don’t want that to be, it.’

Her back is straight as a rod.

‘There was a fire, at Christmas I mean,’ he says. He slumps back on the bench. He feels exhausted. He just wants to tell her everything.

‘A fire? At the farm?’

‘Everything’s turned to shit. I mean everything. They have to sell up – mum and dad. Primrose lost the baby. Max has started drinking. Really couldn’t have got any worse.’

He can feel her processing what he’s said. He rubs his eyes with both hands.

‘You’ve been dealing with all that. By yourself?’

‘Sort of. Made me realise things.’

‘What things?’

‘That I was an idiot. That I need you.’

‘You want me back so I can help look after your mum and dad? How could a girl refuse?’

‘No. I want you back because I love you, because you’re a good person. You want it like a romantic film, Ruby, when all that stuff’s just crap. I want you because it’s better to be together. I want you because you’re different to me, better than me, and because, because I need you and I couldn’t admit that before. Why is that so terrible? To realise you need another person, to realise you’re not as good without them?’