Here and Now

by Santa Montefiore

  Unable to cope with the uncomfortable feeling those thoughts induced, she searched for something positive, for a silver lining to the black cloud. With a sudden burst of happiness she found it: Daisy was coming home.

  She hurried downstairs to find Dennis. He was in the kitchen working on his miniature church. Nan had gone to her room to get ready for the Sunday service, Suze was in the sitting room, still on the phone to Batty – she had given up going to church years ago. ‘That was Daisy,’ Marigold told him breathlessly. ‘She’s coming home.’

  Dennis put down his paintbrush and took off his glasses.

  ‘She and Luca have split up. She says they want different things.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked baffled. ‘And it took them six years to find that out, did it?’

  Marigold began to clear the table. She was so used to clearing up after her family that she did it without thinking, and without annoyance that no one ever helped her. ‘It’ll be nice to have her home again,’ she said.

  Dennis arched an eyebrow. ‘I know one person, who’s not a million miles from here, who’s going to be none too happy about this!’

  ‘Well, Nan is in Daisy’s old room so Suze will have to let Daisy share with her. She’s got twin beds, after all.’

  ‘But Suze is used to having all that space, isn’t she?’ He grinned. ‘Perhaps it’ll encourage her to get a proper job and a place of her own.’

  ‘Children don’t move out these days. I read about it. I can’t remember where. They live with their parents for ever, I think, because they can’t afford to get on the property ladder.’ ‘You can’t get on the property ladder if you don’t get a job.’ Dennis sighed and shook his head. ‘You spoil her,’ he added. ‘We both do.’

  ‘She’ll get a proper job one day and move out and then we’ll miss her.’ Marigold put the frying pan into the sink and sighed. ‘Lovely that Daisy’s coming home.’

  ‘I’d keep it to yourself, if you don’t want your Sunday ruined,’ said Dennis, getting up and moving the miniature church onto the side table.

  Marigold chuckled. ‘Yes, I agree. Mum will say it was never going to last and Suze will have a meltdown. Let’s keep it to ourselves for the moment.’

  Wrapped in coats and hats, Dennis, Marigold and Nan made their way through the snow to the church, which was a five-minute walk up the lane. Nan held on to Dennis as if her life depended on it, while Marigold walked on his other side with her hands in her coat pockets. They passed the primary school that Daisy and Suze had attended, and the village hall where they had been Brownies. But some things had changed: the village had once boasted a small petrol station where Reg Tucker, in his ubiquitous blue boiler suit and cap, had filled the cars himself, invoicing the locals with a monthly bill, but that had been converted in the 1990s into a posh house with a thatched roof, which was covered in snow. Reg had died years ago, buried in the churchyard, which now came into view beyond the fork where the lane divided. A blackbird sang from the top of the war memorial, built in the triangle of grass in front of the gate. At its foot a wreath of crimson poppies seemed to seep into the blanket of white like the blood of the fallen.

  Nan complained all the way. ‘It only looks pretty for the first few hours, then it turns to brown slush and people slip and slide all over the place. I’ll probably slip and break my neck. It would be just my luck, wouldn’t it, to slip in the snow and break my neck? They should have known it was coming and put salt down. But no, it’ll turn to ice overnight and I’ll slip on it and break my neck tomorrow.’

  Marigold didn’t try to change her mother’s mind. She was used to Nan’s complaints and they fell off her like rain off a tin roof. Instead, she enjoyed the sight of the village, swathed in snow. ‘Pretty, isn’t it, Dennis,’ she said, linking her arm in her husband’s free one.

  ‘Very pretty,’ Dennis agreed, taking pleasure from being outside in the crisp morning air, on his way to seeing his friends. ‘Isn’t this grand, girls?’ he exclaimed jovially. ‘The three of us walking in the snow together.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, Dennis,’ grumbled Nan. ‘You’d better hold on to me tightly or I’ll slip.’

  ‘I thought you were going to slip and break your neck tomorrow,’ said Dennis with a grin.

  Nan didn’t hear him. She was already distracted by people filing through the gate and onto the path that led up to the church doors. ‘They’ve cleared the path, I see,’ she said, squinting. ‘But they haven’t done a very good job of it. You’d better hold on to me all the way into the church, Dennis,’ she said. ‘We should have stayed at home instead of coming out in this dreadful weather.’

  Dennis did as he was told and escorted his mother-in-law up the path, greeting friends as he went. ‘Isn’t it lovely!’ they all gushed, for commenting on the weather is the British people’s favourite topic of conversation.

  ‘I’ve had to get my snow boots out of the cupboard,’ said one.

  ‘We had to clear the front drive with a spade,’ said another.

  Nan gave a disapproving sniff. ‘My husband, God rest his soul, did his back in digging us out with a spade,’ she said. ‘I’d be very careful if I were you.’

  The church smelt pleasantly of wax and flowers. Nan let go of Dennis’s arm. She didn’t like talking to cheerful people and went on ahead to find a seat. Dutifully, Marigold followed.

  Like his father before him, Dennis was the local carpenter. There was barely a house in the village where he hadn’t worked. A dresser here, a table there, a set of bookshelves or kitchen cabinets, a Wendy house for the children or a garden shed for Grandad. He knew everyone and loved shooting the breeze. He was considered by many to be a local treasure, an honorary member of the family, for as much time was spent chatting as putting up the pieces he made, and often, once on site, he’d replace the odd doorknob that had come off or re-grout the bathroom for no extra charge. He was like that, Dennis; a good man.

  However, his trade had taken its toll on his body. He had bad knees and chronic back pain from carrying heavy things, and his left thumb bore the scars from the sharp tools he used, but he never complained. Dennis had always considered himself lucky that he was able to do what he loved. The duty on his health was a small price to pay.

  Marigold was proud of her husband. He was a master of his trade. ‘Just give him a piece of wood and he’ll be as happy as a beaver,’ she’d say when someone else put in a request, and it was true, Dennis was never more content than when he was working in his shed, listening to Planet Rock on the radio while Mac the cat observed him silently from the windowsill.

  But nothing satisfied Dennis more than making Marigold’s Christmas present.

  Every year he made her a jigsaw puzzle. It was no surprise, she knew what she’d be getting, but not what it would look like. There was always a surprise in that. He’d choose a theme first and then find pictures which he’d stick onto a six millimetre sheet of plywood before cutting it with a scroll saw. It was a fiddly job, but Dennis was good at fiddly things. Last year’s had been flowers, Marigold loved flowers. The year before had been birds. This year he had chosen an old-fashioned scene of an ice rink with grown-ups and children skating in the falling snow. He’d found the picture in the charity shop and thought she’d like it. As he sat in the pew his mind turned to her puzzle and his excitement warmed him on the inside like the baked potato his mother used to put in his coat pocket when he walked to school in the wintertime. Marigold had always loved jigsaw puzzles and Dennis was very good at making them. Every year he tried to make it a little more complicated or a little bigger, to give her a greater challenge. This year he knew he had outdone all the others. It was made up of over a hundred small pieces and would take her a long time to put together because he hadn’t taken a photograph of the original picture for her to copy. He glanced at her, sitting beside him with her cheeks rosy from the walk and her hazel eyes sparkling from the pleasure it had given her. He took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed it back and smiled
. Nan noticed, tutted and shook her head. They were much too old for that, she thought sourly.

  After the service the congregants gathered in the hall for tea and biscuits. This was the bit Marigold and Dennis liked the best. Nan liked it the least. She had lived in the village all her married life and had suffered the socializing her husband had enjoyed, but after she had been widowed she’d always taken herself home as soon as the vicar had said the Blessing. Now she had no choice but to mingle because she was dependent on Marigold and Dennis, and she needed Dennis’s arm to help her back to the house.

  Marigold and Dennis were talking to their neighbours, John and Susan Glenn, when Marigold felt a light tapping on her shoulder. She turned to see the round, eager face of Eileen Utley, who was in her nineties and still played the organ at every Sunday service without making a single mistake. She was holding Marigold’s handbag. ‘You left this in the pew,’ she said.

  Marigold looked at the handbag and frowned. Then she looked at her right arm, expecting the bag to be hooked over it, as usual. To her astonishment, it wasn’t. ‘How strange,’ she said to Eileen. ‘I must have been thinking about something else.’ Daisy coming home, perhaps? ‘Thank you.’

  She sighed. ‘I’ve been getting a bit forgetful lately. This isn’t the first time I’ve left something behind. But look at you, Eileen. As sharp as a tack. Nothing forgetful about you!’

  ‘I’m ninety-two!’ said Eileen proudly. ‘I’ve still got all my marbles. The secret is crosswords and Sudoku. They keep your mind working. It’s like a muscle, you see. You have to exercise it.’

  ‘Mum does the crossword every day.’

  ‘And look at her.’ They both turned their eyes to Nan, who was holding a cup of tea and complaining to the vicar about the lack of salt on the road. He was listening with the patience God had given him for these very moments. ‘She’s still got all her marbles too, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, she has.’

  ‘How is it, having her at home?’

  ‘I think she’s happier living with us. Dad’s been gone over fifteen years now and it’s lonely on your own. She doesn’t like animals, so she was never going to have a dog or a cat for company. She tolerates Mac and he gives her a wide berth. He only has eyes for Dennis anyway. It seemed logical as we had Daisy’s old room with no one in it. And it’s the least I can do. After all, she looked after me for eighteen years, didn’t she?’

  ‘You’re a good girl, Marigold,’ said Eileen, patting her on the arm. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she added, because Eileen popped into the village shop at nine every morning, not because she really needed anything, but because she didn’t have anything else to do.

  Marigold hooked her handbag over her arm and wondered how she hadn’t noticed it was missing. She hadn’t, until recently, been the sort of person who left things behind. I suppose I am getting old, she thought, a little dispirited. Her mind searched for something positive. Then she found it: Daisy’s coming home . . .

  Chapter 2

  The next day Daisy telephoned at dawn to tell them that she had managed to get a flight out of Milan late that morning and would be home by nightfall, sending Suze into a spin. ‘She’s not sharing my bedroom!’ she declared, only to be told by her mother that she’d have to because there were no spare rooms in the house now that Nan had come to live with them. ‘It’s not fair!’ Suze had cried, tossing her mane and flashing her blue eyes. ‘Where am I going to put all my clothes? Can’t she sleep on the sofa? I mean, it’s temporary, isn’t it? She’ll be back with Luca by the end of the week. It’s ridiculous me having to move all my stuff, just because she decides to come home. It’s perfectly comfortable on the sofa. Can’t she sleep there!’ She had stormed up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door.

  Marigold had gone out to feed the birds. It had stopped snowing during the night and now the sky was flat and white, the snow flat and white below it, waiting for the sun to rise and turn it into diamonds. Marigold unhooked the feeder from the tree and looked for the robin to appear, which it did, on the roof of Dennis’s shed. ‘Suze has always been selfish,’ she told it as she carefully poured the seed. ‘I suppose I’m to blame. I’ve worked hard all my life, as has Dennis, so that we can provide for our children and give them an easier time than we had. But in so doing we’ve made it too easy for her.’ The robin’s little head jerked from side to side as if it was trying to understand her. ‘Life is complicated for us humans. I think it’s easier being a bird.’ She hooked the feeder back on the branch. ‘At least Daisy is coming back. I can’t help being excited about that, although I’m sad she’s broken up with Luca. I’ve hated her living abroad. I can only admit that to you. I’ve hated her living so far from home.’

  When Marigold returned to the kitchen Nan was sitting in her usual place at the kitchen table. ‘Daisy’s going to set the cat among the pigeons,’ she predicted, pursing her lips. ‘This house is too small for all of us.’

  ‘It’s too small for Suze. It’s fine for the rest of us,’ Marigold corrected her.

  ‘Are you going to let her live with you for ever? She’s twenty-five years old. Time to move out and make her own way in life, I would have thought. When I was her age—’

  ‘You were married with two teenage children, well, almost,’ Marigold interrupted. ‘It’s different nowadays. Life is harder.’

  ‘Life has always been hard and it always will be. Life is what you make of it, that’s what your father always said and he knew a thing or two about that.’

  ‘I must open the shop,’ said Marigold, edging towards the door.

  ‘Suze should help you out in there, instead of doing all that silly stuff she does on her telephone. It would do her good to do some proper work.’

  ‘I don’t need an extra pair of hands,’ said Marigold. ‘I have Tasha.’

  ‘Tasha.’ Nan sniffed. ‘I don’t call that an extra pair of hands.

  I call that a headache.’

  ‘She works hard.’

  ‘When she’s here.’

  ‘She’s here most of the time.’

  ‘Most is not the word I would use, but then you’re a people-pleaser, Marigold, you always have been. Well, off you go then. I’ll hold the fort in here, cheer Suze up with a few tales of the deprivation I suffered as a child.’

  Marigold laughed. ‘Oh, she’ll love you for that.’

  Nan smiled back. ‘The young don’t know how lucky they are.’ Then when Marigold was halfway out the door, she called after her, ‘Be a dear and bring me some digestive biscuits when you have a moment, the chocolate ones. I like to dip them in my tea.’

  Marigold had owned the village shop for over thirty years. It had been convenient for her when the children were little because the house was separated from the shop by a small, cobbled courtyard, so it was easy to dash back and forth. The buildings were pretty white cottages with small windows and grey slate roofs, and the gardens at the back, although not very large, gave onto rolling fields. Fields that belonged to the wealthy landowner Sir Owen Sherwood, so there was no danger of them being developed to expand the village. There was always talk of the need for more houses, but that land prevented them from being built there, in Dennis and Marigold’s view. The farm was so big, with woodland and fields, that the whole eastern side of the village was protected from developers, while the western side was protected by the sea. It was an idyllic place to live. The only complaint, if Marigold had one, which she didn’t like to admit to because it went against her nature to moan, was that the big supermarket, built in the 1980s a few miles outside the village, had stolen much of her business. Still, she took care to stock essential items as well as gifts, and the post office, of course, was useful to the locals. She made a decent living. So did Dennis. They were comfortable and happy.

  Tasha was already in the shop when Marigold appeared. A single mother with two children under ten and the unfortunate disposition of being a little delicate, Tasha was not someone who could be relied upon. Her child
ren were often sick, too, or she needed to stay home for an electrician or a delivery, or she was overtired and run-down and required the odd day at home to rest. Marigold was indulgent. She didn’t like confrontation and she didn’t like hard feelings. And she reasoned that, although Tasha wasn’t very dependable, she was a nice, smiley presence to have around the shop, and that counted for a lot. The customers liked her because she was polite and charming, and when she was there, she did the job well. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, Marigold figured.

  ‘Good morning.’ Tasha’s cheerful voice lifted Marigold’s spirits.

  ‘You’re here,’ said Marigold, pleasantly surprised.

  ‘Well, I was wondering if I could leave a little early today. Milly’s in a play and I promised I’d help with the make-up.’

  Marigold could hardly deny her that. ‘Of course you can. What play is it?’ And Tasha told her about it as she began a stocktake of the shelves. ‘Did you remember to order baked beans, Marigold?’ she asked. ‘We’re totally out of them and they’re very popular.’

  ‘Baked beans? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I asked you last week. Remember?’

  Marigold didn’t remember. She couldn’t even recall having had the conversation. ‘How odd. I’ll do it right away.’

  At nine Eileen Utley came in. She bought some milk, then spent the next hour chatting to the locals, who filed in one after the other to buy a newspaper, a pint of milk or to post a parcel. Eileen enjoyed watching the bustle of village life. It made her feel part of the place, rather than on the periphery, which was what staying at home with the telly did.