Homecoming (8 page)

‘’Scuse us,’ she says, and goes to attend to the two ladies who are preparing to leave.

The café is emptying as the clock ticks towards closing time, but Dave shows no sign of hopping it. She wants to pull out the Hoover and cash up but he’s sitting there, on his high stool, looking down at a folded newspaper that someone has discarded. He’s taken her pen from the corner of the hatch.

‘Seven letters,’ he says. ‘I’m tremendously keen to dissipate fat and I can.’ She sucks in her stomach and tugs on the back of her skirt. ‘No idea, Dave,’ she says. She bends to fill the dishwasher, still holding in her tummy, the crumbs mingling with slurries of strawberry sauce.

‘Fan-at-ic,’ he says, filling it in with her pen. ‘Fanatic.’

He was always like this at school. Superior.

‘So whereabouts are you living?’ he asks.

‘Theobald Road. It’s just along the river from here. I’ve got a little flat. And my boyfriend lives in the same street.’ She throws it in, airily.

‘Nice. You’re all set up then. Are you going home for Christmas? Or spending it with your fella?’

She flinches. ‘Oh no, god no, it’s early days. Haven’t really decided.’

‘I can’t wait to go back,’ says Dave.

‘You got a girlfriend?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Haven’t met the right girl yet.’ And he winks at her, then goes back to his crossword. He really is very muscly.

‘Brazilian music, Ruby. “The Girl from Ipanema”.’

Ruby turns from the dishwasher and starts to sing, sashaying and smiling. ‘Tall and tan and da-da-da something, the girl from Ipanema goes walking.’

Dave is drinking her in.

‘Do you know,’ she says, glittering a bit under his gaze. ‘I think that’s bossa nova. Would that fit?’

Bartholomew props his bicycle against the wall outside the café. He is covered in a sheen of sweat, having pedalled hard from the garden centre on the outskirts of town, past the castle and through the abbey gardens to the centre – Market Street, where her café is. It’s a shabby place – the sort that serves toasted cheese sandwiches with shavings of carrot on the side. A waste of her talents, he always thinks. Ruby’s cooking is so much better than that: monkfish with pancetta, risottos and soufflés, steamed asparagus topped with perfect poached eggs. All of it tried out on him at home. She’s the sort of cook who stoops over the plate.

It is fully dark now and Ruby’s fairy lights trip out their coloured rhythm, doggedly. He can see her dancing in the back kitchen, a man sat on a high stool. His very broad back. He seems to be writing something. He sees them laugh together.

Bartholomew pushes open the door.

‘Hello,’ she says, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Come and meet Dave. Bartholomew Hartle, Dave Garside. Dave Garside, Bartholomew Hartle.’

‘Bartholomew,’ says broad-backed Dave. ‘That’s an unusual name. Bit of a mouthful.’

Fuck off, thinks Bartholomew. ‘You’re from the north, too,’ he says.

‘Ruby and I were at school together. This is my new local,’ says Dave. ‘I didn’t realise the food was so good.’

‘Ruby’s a good cook.’

‘You’re lucky.’

‘I am, yes. Shall we go, Rube?’

‘I have to lock up.’

‘Don’t mind me,’ says Dave. ‘I’m off. See you soon, Ruby – tomorrow probably.’

Bartholomew watches his huge outline disappear out of the door.

‘He’s buff,’ he says.

‘He works out,’ says Ruby, absently, pulling a fistful of keys from her bag.

Bartholomew wheels his bicycle slowly along the smooth tarmac of the riverside path. The air is tinkling now with a light drizzle which pinks and plocks onto the surface of the river and patters through the tall trees. Ruby is walking on his left, the hood of her pea-green coat up so that all he can see is one shiny red cheek and the way her hair has curled with the moisture in the air. Every now and then she sniffs as a drip gathers at the end of her nose.

He has to wheel unnaturally slowly to keep pace with her and she sometimes, during this regular walk home together, remarks on how awkward it is. ‘Makes me feel you’d rather be off freewheeling,’ she’ll say. This evening she is talking animatedly about her day.

‘Do you have any idea how many people are mad?’ she says. ‘It’s like 78 per cent.’

‘Is that a statistical fact, or something you made up?’

‘It’s a statistical fact.’ He raises his eyebrows at her. ‘Which I just made up. I read this brilliant thing today in my magazine. It was by an agony aunt. She said she’d printed a letter from a man who could only, you know, climax if someone stuck Sellotape to ’im and ripped it off really fast.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘But the funniest thing about it was that six other readers wrote in to say, “Thank goodness. I thought I was the only one.”’

Bartholomew laughs. She laughs too.

‘Had some news today,’ he says.

She looks at him.

‘Max and Primrose are having a baby.’

He thinks he can detect something nervous – a flinch – but she just smiles, a thin, tight smile.

‘Mum and dad are right excited,’ he says.

‘I’ll bet. What about you?’

‘Aye, I think it’s nice. Primrose though. She’s a funny one.’

‘You don’t think she’ll be a good mother?’

‘It’s not that. She’s just not that . . . open, I s’pose.’

‘D’ye think they’re ready?’ she says.

‘When is anyone ready?’ he says. ‘You just have to get on and do it, don’t you?’

She looks at him now and her smile is full and open. He can feel all her natural warmth emanate towards him.

They clatter into the communal hallway outside Bartholomew’s flat. She makes her way to his kitchen at the rear – a cold, hard room she’s always thought, with faux-wooden units lit by a sixty-watt bulb. He’s never made any attempt to prettify his home – no lamps or flowers or rugs. It half appals her and half seems an opportunity for her to provide something at some later date. She knows that part of him feels more comfortable at her cosy flat than he does here, even though he won’t let go of it.

‘Dave was askin’ me about Christmas,’ she shouts to the hallway, where he is taking off his cycling gear. She’s been emboldened by the baby comment. Perhaps he is coming round. ‘And my mum asked about it, too. Wants to know what I’m doing.’

There is no reply. Ruby stops. She is squatting beside the fridge, wondering how this is going to go and whether she’d be better off steering clear. She curses herself, as she does when she knows she’s sent too many text messages.

He has come in and is sitting at the kitchen table, still in his cagoule. He fingers some takeaway flyers which lie on the table top among unopened post. She is searching through his tiny fridge and filling her arms with minced beef, celery and mushrooms.

‘This is past its sell-by date but I’m sure it’s fine,’ she says, looking at the beef. She gets up and takes a knife from the drawer, slitting open the packaging to smell the contents.

‘Smells fine,’ she says, and she pushes it under his nose for a second opinion. He nods.

‘If you don’t want to come to Leeds,’ she says, ‘I could come and spend it with your family.’ She has her back to him now, her whole body tense, but she keeps moving, taking out a chopping board and starting on an onion, not looking at him.

‘It’s a bit short notice,’ he says.

‘It’s November.’

‘There’s not much room at ours. The house is a bit cramped.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Let’s not talk about it now.’

She closes her eyes, presses the heel of her hand into one eyelid, still clutching the knife, and sucks in through her teeth.

‘Bloody onions,’ she says.

Joe stands under the cathedral-like rafters of his hay barn, in the far corner of a quadrangle of outbuildings. The air is dusty – November is turning out that dry. It is making the dogs sneeze as they snuffle about the base of the bales. He must check they’re nice and dry, the bales, and the additional pellets he’s bought in that have cost him so dear. His winter feed. If the hay’s musty, or just doesn’t smell right, the ewes could turn their noses up and they need their feed from now and for the four months till lambing. He’ll need to increase their nutrition as their time gets near: lots of good home-made hay and silage, then cereal cake and ewe rolls when they’re big with pregnancy. He’ll be feeding them twice a day up on the fell, when the lambs start to press on their stomachs so they can’t take in so much bulk. Especially those carrying twins – they’ll need food that’s small and rich with molasses.

The bales are stacked, perhaps forty feet, bathed in a weak, pastel light. He hears a crow’s caw, giving an abrupt measure of the height and volume of the sky. The low-slung sun sends a burnished outline onto the beams inside the barn. There are gaps in the rafters, patch-worked with corrugated plastic, which cast golden squares onto the straw. Here you could find God, thinks Joe, taking in the sheer scale of the place as if for the first time, if you were looking for Him.

Joe begins running his hand along the hay bales to feel for patches of damp. He is clambering now, among the bales, sliding his hand between the tight rows. Too tight, perhaps, but the yield had been good at baling last June, when the hedgerows had been thick with cow parsley and elder, the uncut grass at the roadside swaying, soft as fur. He marvels that summer goodness can be stored like this – baled for the lean times, when the fell was covered in snow and pickings were slim.

He feels the hay blades prick into his skin. It is hard to feel the damp when the air is cold. He begins to forget what he’s feeling for. And hay always feels warm to the touch. He looks up at the rafters and recalls Eric’s suggestion, just after baling, to get a professional re-roofing job done while the beams were dry. Typical Eric. He’d been that sort of farmer, too – a great one for hiring in labour. Liked to keep his shoes clean. Hoovering his Nissan Micra. Getting Dennis Lunn to paint his windows.

‘You’re playing with fire there,’ Eric had said, squinting up at the barn, rocking on his heels.

Joe had slapped Eric on the back, saying, ‘Jeez man, you were always work-shy. That’s nothing I can’t handle myself.’

And he’d struggled up a ladder alone with those squares of plastic and a too-heavy hammer to repair the gaps as he spotted them. And Max, he’d been at the bottom, holding the ladder steady and looking up at Joe.

His right hand is becoming chapped with the cold and the scratching of hay. The winter light is fading, the barn now dim and eerie. A bairn, he thinks. A bairn will sort out Max, make a man of him. They changed everything, children. Made you who you were supposed to be. He looks out through the vast open mouth of the barn, to where the tractor is parked: dirty, rusted green, with high, wide wheels whose imprint is all over his farm. Quiet now, and silhouetted, it looks like a museum piece, which it soon would be. He’d started the application to the bank for a loan last night, after Ann had gone to bed. It’d take a while – probably come through some time in January. By that time, she’d see how fat the ewes were, how well they were going to do at lambing. And how long could the market stay so bad, with nobody wanting British meat? No, it’d have to change soon.

He’s fed up of thinking on it. He’s tired of feeling cold and stiff about the fingers. He wants to get warm by the Rayburn and drink his tea.

‘You’re about dry,’ he says to his bales, and he whistles to the dogs to follow him in.

He walks in through the back door into the kitchen and the dogs clatter in behind him and find their padded baskets, which are matted with dog hairs. They each turn around twice on the spot, and lie down in the warmth of the Rayburn.

Joe hangs his coat on a hook by the back door and prises off his work boots. They are unusually clean because of the dry. He sees the surfaces wiped by Ann, the cloth resting where the sweep of her hand has last left it. Her faint voice drifts in from the hallway, louder now as he opens the kitchen door and approaches her.

‘Yes, we have a family of sheep,’ Ann is saying, her finger twisting around the tight coils of the telephone cord. ‘Well, more than a family really – five hundred odd, sometimes more. They keep us and we keep them. Quite biblical, isn’t it?’

She looks down at her slippers, blinking. Chap at the other end of the line is asking something about sheep breeds but she is distracted by Joe coming down the corridor towards her.

‘No, they’re Swaledales. Black faces, with a white nose. Curly horns, yes, that’s it. Make marvellous mothers, Swales. They’ll lamb in all weathers. Thrivers, they are. No, we tried with the Rough Fells, but it didn’t work out. You don’t find Rough Fells up here any more really.’

Joe walks past her in the hallway, about to climb the stairs when the doorbell goes. He and Ann look at each other. She shrugs, then motions to him to answer the door.

‘Lost about two hundred in the culls in 2001. Devastated we were. We’ve restocked now though.’

Joe opens the door and there is Primrose. Ann waves to her, saying into the phone, ‘Are you sure that’s all you need? Well, call back if there’s anything else.’

She puts the receiver down, flustered at this collision of events. ‘Hiya love,’ she says. ‘This is unexpected.’

‘How’s that grandchild of mine?’ asks Joe, ushering Primrose in with a hand on her back. Ann can see him beaming.

‘Nothing wrong is there?’ she asks. ‘Everything alright with the baby?’

‘Yes fine, I just wanted to ask you something,’ says Primrose. Not like her, thinks Ann. Perhaps this is the shape of things to come. Mothers together.

‘Come in, come in,’ says Ann, and then to Joe, ‘That was the chap from the
Dalesman
. Asking about sheep breeds.’

‘Oh, hark at her,’ says Joe. ‘When’s that out then?’

‘I don’t know actually. I forgot to ask ’im,’ says Ann.

They troop down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, where Joe and Primrose take seats at the table and Ann goes to the kettle.

‘Where’s Max?’ she asks, with her back to Primrose.

‘At the Fox.’

‘Tea alright?’ asks Ann.