‘Er... yes. Nathan.’
At this moment, this critical moment, the dangerous conversation is saved by Rob bowling back into the room. He’s wrapped in a pink candlewick dressing gown that I think might have had mice nesting in it because it’s all nibbled and shredded up the arm.
Ruby laughs at him, thoughts of strange men with the same name as her birth father completely gone.
‘Great, you’re up, Ruby,’ he says. ‘All ready to help with the picking?’
‘She’s not well.’ I speak for her. ‘She’s getting a cold. She needs to rest.’
‘Oh, sorry, no. You’d better stay put. Is Scarlet awake?’
‘Awake? Scarlet?’ Ruby laughs again and I catch Rob wincing slightly and wonder if what he told me about the difference between our girls is true.
‘Noted. By the way, the Lord of Devonshire is sending round his labourers. That’s neighbourly of him, isn’t it?’ He looks at me, must see the mixed emotions written across my face despite me trying my very best to pretend this is all quite normal and I’m not hiding the fact that the new next-door neighbour and Ruby’s birth father are one and the same man. ‘Isn’t it?’ Doubt is creeping in, but he doesn’t pursue it. ‘Right. I’ll go and shake her.’
‘I’d give her a coffee if I were you. Three sugars. Then you might have a fighting chance.’ Ruby turns over then, pulls the covers up to her ears and it’s clear she’s had enough. Though I’m not entirely sure what she’s had enough of. But one thing at a time.
‘Rob, maybe we should have that family confab now?’
‘Family confab?’
‘Your trip?’
‘Now?’
‘We can’t keep putting it off.’
‘Right then. Now.’ He disappears to wake Scarlet.
TEN MINUTES LATER the four of us are in the bed together, just like old times. Saturday mornings and Christmas Day, Rob and me up one end, Scarlet and Ruby down the other. Only it’s not the same; not when they’re fifteen, one with a cold, the other with sleep deprivation.
‘Rob has something to tell you.’ I shut my eyes, sip the coffee that Rob has made for us all, keep my head very, very still and my eyes tightly closed – so tightly they ache – so I can avoid his glare of annoyance or panic or whatever it is he might be feeling right now because I’ve handed the baton over. But hey, we wouldn’t even be having this talk if it wasn’t for him and his madcap ideas.
‘What is it, Dad?’ asks Scarlet.
Once he begins to speak, I open my eyes and watch the girls, waiting for their reaction. I have no idea how they will take it.
‘You know when you wanted to learn to play the harp, Ruby?’
‘Yeah...?’ Ruby’s wondering where this is going. As am I.
‘Well,’ Rob continues, ‘you were really determined that was what you wanted to do. It was no use Mum and me persuading you to take up the flute or the violin. It had to be the harp. We never really understood why; it was just your dream. And now you’re living that dream.’
Ruby sniffs and I hand her a tissue. Yes, she’s really living the dream.
‘And Scarlet. You know how you wanted to be a vegan and nothing would put you off, not even me having a go?’
She nods. ‘Meat is murder,’ she says, simply.
‘You were determined,’ he says. ‘Animal rights is your passion.’
Among many other things.
‘Well, I’ve never really had a passion,’ he goes on. ‘I’ve spent the last twenty years working in a job with the sole purpose of getting people to buy things they don’t actually need. As if they don’t already have enough things.’
‘The world’s richest 1 per cent get 82 per cent of the wealth,’ Scarlet pipes up. ‘Most people can’t afford anything.’
‘British people then,’ he clarifies.
‘What about food banks?’
‘OK, point taken. What I’m trying to say is most people in the West don’t need more stuff to make them happy. All they need is enough stuff. And, granted, some people don’t have enough stuff and that’s not fair. And my job just buys into all that.’
At this moment I can’t help but chime in. ‘Rob, your point is...?’
‘I’m just coming to that,’ he says, determinedly patient.
‘What is it, Rob?’ Ruby asks earnestly.
He looks from one girl to the other. ‘I want to do something that will probably seem selfish.’
They wait. They’re not going to help him here. And I’m certainly not either.
‘I’m going to cycle across Africa.’
‘Africa?’ they both wail in unison, Scarlet’s eyes wide in astonishment, Ruby’s brimming with tears.
Then, ‘How long will that take?’
Rob does at least have the decency to sound contrite when he says, ‘A year.’
Scarlet swears and I don’t have the heart to tell her off because she immediately covers her mouth with her hand and apologizes. It’s a word I’d like to have said myself but I’m the grown-up.
Ruby is silent. A lone tear slips down her pale, rashy face. ‘A year?’ she manages to croak.
‘I know it’s a long time,’ Rob says. ‘I mean, it is a long way.’ He starts to name the countries he intends to ride through. ‘South Africa, Namibia, Botswana—’
‘Why?’ Ruby’s voice is very quiet, husky, confused, but as clear as can be.
‘Yeah, why, Dad?’ Scarlet has also quietened, bewildered and shocked by her father’s announcement.
Rob thinks about this for a moment. Puts his arms around both girls and pulls them close to him, gently. They resist at first, then let themselves sink into him, little girls again cuddling up for a bedtime story.
‘I suppose people will think it’s a mid-life crisis,’ he says. ‘Maybe it is. But one thing I know is that you three will be fine without me. And a year is nothing. It’ll fly by.’
‘A year takes forever,’ Ruby says.
‘We’ll be in Year 11 by the time you get back,’ Scarlet adds.
‘What about Christmas?’ Ruby pulls away from Rob so she can get a good look at him, as if looks alone could change his mind.
Scarlet does the same. Goes for the jugular. ‘What about our birthdays?’ she says.
Rob takes a deep breath, decides not to answer them directly but from a different angle entirely. ‘I want you to be proud of me,’ he says. ‘I want to achieve something. I want to follow a dream I’ve had since I learnt to ride a bike.’
This is the first I’ve heard of his dream but I don’t say anything because all I can focus on is those ‘I want’s clanging inside my head.
Ruby’s mind is racing ahead now. ‘Who are you going with?’ she asks.
‘Just me and the bike,’ he says.
‘But aren’t you scared?’ Ruby’s scared of going to the Co-op by herself, so this is extremely hard for her to contemplate.
‘Of what?’
‘The lions and all that,’ she says. ‘Where are you going to sleep?’
‘I’ll be camping.’
‘Camping?’
‘If I can’t find somewhere safe to pitch my tent, I’ll find a hostel or a guest house.’
And this goes on for a good half-hour, back and forth, here and there, dodging between the three of them, while I let them get on with it until the questions and queries fizzle out and the girls listen quietly as he gets more and more animated and it’s as if he’s already there in his mind; Africa, thousands of miles away from here. He’s ready to go. He has a real plan. He is altogether much more organized than I realized.
Finally, silence. The sort of silence only a teenager knows how to employ. Dark and moody and likely to be highly explosive at some time in the future.
But Scarlet breaks it with, ‘Good for you, Dad.’
I am so flabbergasted that I don’t say a thing. What’s happened to wild, tempestuous Scarlet? Why isn’t she shouting and screaming at her father for abandoning her? For abandoning us? His family.
>
And Ruby says nothing. She rolls over again and I don’t know if those sniffs are due to the cold or because she is crying.
‘I want to sleep now,’ she says. ‘Can you go?’
‘Course, Rube,’ Rob says. ‘We’ve got a harvest to reap.’
‘GUESS WHAT, NANA EVE,’ Scarlet asks, the four of us reconvened in the kitchen where my mother is washing dishes, humming to herself in that distracted way of hers, while Des feeds some scraps to Luther. ‘Nana Eve.’
‘Yes, my darling?’ She carries on scrubbing.
‘Dad’s cycling across Africa! For a year! An actual whole year! Can you believe it?’
‘Well, I never,’ Eve says. ‘That is very hard to believe.’
I feel myself bristle. I might be mightily fed up with Rob’s plan, but Eve could sound more encouraging in front of Scarlet and Ruby, which I am quite aware is contrary of me.
Maybe Eve picks up on my vibes because she stops washing up for a moment and turns to address my husband. ‘That’s very ambitious, Rob.’ She throws him a look, supposed to convey just how impressed she is with this revelation. Only, my mother isn’t a very good actress and Scarlet and Ruby will cotton on any moment that their Nana Eve knows about this plan already. Fortunately something more pressing distracts them.
‘What’s that smell?’ Scarlet narrows her eyes.
Ruby inhales. Pulls a face.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Scarlet says. ‘It’s the partridges, isn’t it?’
‘It’s not the partridges,’ Des says.
She sighs dramatically with relief. Which is daft because it’s clearly meat of some kind, which begs the question, why are dead partridges any worse than dead chickens or cows? It’s the old country-versus-city thing again, I suppose. But I’m not going to say anything.
Unfortunately, just as I think we’ve got away without a lecture on the environmental and economic impact of meat production, Des pipes up.
‘It’s the rabbits I shot earlier in the week,’ he says, while throwing Luther another scrap, which the old boy catches with surprising ease, showing a lifetime of practice.
‘Rabbits?’
Rob rushes Scarlet out of the kitchen and into the boot room, forcing her into her wellies before war is declared.
‘They were free-range,’ Des calls after her. ‘Lived a good life, eating up our vines.’
But Scarlet doesn’t hear. Or if she does, she doesn’t reply. Instead there’s the cold, hard bang of the back door slamming behind her.
EVE STAYS INDOORS, while Rob, Scarlet, Melina and I get started in the vineyard, joining the dozen or so people already working away out here. I count four of the stalwart villagers, including Barbara with the big hair and T’ai Chi Clara, plus eight of next door’s workers, who introduce themselves one by one: Tomasz, Michal, Julia, Aleksy, Zofia, Piotr, Gabriel and Borys.
And someone else. Further up the hill. The lone wolf picking and snipping with speed.
‘Morning, Chrissie,’ Nathan shouts, bright and breezy when I’d like to trample him in the dewy earth until his top-of-the-range farmer coat is ruined and, while I’m at it, shred his ridiculous cowboy hat with my secateurs.
‘This is a watershed moment!’ he calls out, bulldozing his way down the hill towards my spot.
I’m trapped. Workers below me. No exit route. He’s standing before me now. In my space.
‘A “watershed moment”? What do you mean by that?’
‘For English wine. This bumper crop. I know how important it is to your family.’
‘It’s a shame the wine is so bloody awful,’ I say before I can stop myself – and immediately feel like a traitor. I am a traitor.
‘They’ve done remarkably well setting up this vineyard over the last few years,’ he rattles on. ‘And this is a brilliant harvest. But you were right to intervene.’
I’m about to tell him that my intervention was only down to Melina, who realized the bad wine was due to the dodgy old press, but I don’t get the chance even to draw breath because he ploughs on regardless.
‘They’ve got Pinot Noir and Chardonnay,’ he says. ‘But the holy trinity is missing one.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Pinot Meunier.’
‘Why are you telling me this? All these years and you’re talking about grape varieties? Our daughter’s inside – with a cold, I might add – and apart from the briefest of apologies, you’re yabbering on about Pinot Minot?’
‘Pinot Meunier.’
‘That’s what I said.’
He sighs, like it’s costing him a lot in patience. Him! The cheek of it. But before I have the chance to get too outraged, he’s moved the conversation onto wobbly ground, which is partly my fault for bringing it up, but how could I not?
‘Is Ruby all right?’ he asks.
‘Is Ruby all right?’
He’s taken aback by the venom in my voice, the anger in my face. I was always the sensible one. The controlled one. But now... Now I think I might actually be – scaring him?
‘Right,’ he says. ‘I can see we’re not going to have a sensible chat now.’ He backs off a couple of steps. ‘We’ll leave it for another day.’
‘See you in another decade or so. When Ruby’s pushing thirty with her own kids.’
He opens his mouth to reply and then clamps it shut – why is everyone acting like goldfish around me? – and stomps off, back to his position further up the hill. He carries on picking, bent over with his backside towards me so I have an almost overwhelming desire to charge up to him and kick it with my wellies, but I don’t have the energy. I just want this job over and done with.
Des appears next to me – a brief break from work. His huge presence is comforting.
‘You’ve got a face on you,’ he says. ‘I suppose that’s something to do with Rob buggering off. Your mother told me all about it. I don’t agree it’s a good idea. He’s shirking his responsibilities, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘To be honest, Des, I’m miffed about Rob, of course I am, but it’s the other one that’s got me all worked up.’
‘Ah. Nathan.’
‘Yes. Nathan. Why did neither of you think to mention he’d come back? That he’d bought next door, for goodness’ sake?’
‘We did think about telling you. We thought about it rather a lot, actually, but sort of parked it to one side, if you’ll forgive that awful expression.’
That ‘awful expression’ is one of Rob’s favourites. Along with ‘squaring the circle’, ‘touching base offline’, and ‘joined-up blue-sky thinking’. A need to make something more impressive than it actually is. Which I suppose is thanks to his profession. Marketing. Making people believe they want stuff they don’t need.
‘We were going to tell you, but then Eve broke her wrist and then there was all the worry of the harvest and... Well, now you know.’
There’s a pause. I do nothing to fill it. I let Des scrabble around.
‘Chrissie. My darling girl.’ He holds my shoulders; gently, tenderly.
There’s not another person in the whole wide world whom I would allow to call me ‘girl’. But he’s been the best father he could. And I thought that was what Rob was doing for Ruby. But it seems I never knew Rob at all; he’s just like Nathan.
‘Chrissie, listen to me.’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘You always have a choice. That’s something your mother and I have been adamant about.’
‘I know, Des, sorry. I don’t mean to moan but you can see how all this has thrown me.’
‘Yes, I realize that. I also realize that Nathan has been a man of utter fecklessness. But—’
‘Does there have to be a but?’
‘Sadly, yes. There always has to be a but. And the but is that Nathan has lent us his workforce, even said he’ll pay them. He’s gone beyond and above being neighbourly.’
‘That’s guilt for you,’ I retort. ‘That’s why he’s being “neighbourly”. To make
up for being such a prick all these years.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And there’ll be some other ulterior motive. Don’t be conned by him, Des.’
‘Really, Chrissie, you are such a cynic.’
‘I’m a realist. I’m talking from experience. Personal, bitter experience. How can you be so forgiving?’
The sun beats down. The wind blows. My lips are dry. My head hurts. I’m cross. Fed up. Tired. But mainly cross. I put my head down and snip, snip, snip the low-hanging fruit and only feel a little bit bad for sending Des off with a flea in his ear.
THE GONG CLANGS for coffee break. I flounce down the row of vines quickly, before I have to face the odious ex, though flouncing is quite tricky in wellies.
I find a lonely hay bale just inside the barn entrance and sit down away from the throng. The locals queue up for DIY coffee then move out into the sunshine and bask on the plastic chairs, while next door’s workers light up fags in the yard, Des directing them away from the barn to the picnic benches.
‘You can’t let heritage like that go up in flames,’ he’s always saying about the thatched-roof outbuildings.
They do as they’re told, chatting away in Polish, welcoming Melina enthusiastically into the fold, and it’s strange but nice hearing her speak in her mother tongue and I let my thoughts drift away with the sound of their voices. Then I remember about Melina’s grandmother’s farm and wonder at that other life. How did she end up washing our kitchen floor and cleaning our loo?
‘She’s quite something, your Melanie,’ Nathan announces as he bounds up to me, interrupting my thoughts and sitting himself down on my hay bale without an invitation, slopping coffee onto my fleece, which he doesn’t even notice or apologize for.
‘Melina. And she’s not mine.’
‘But she is your cleaner.’
‘Yes, she is our cleaner.’
‘Melina the cleaner.’
‘Yes, ha ha. No one’s ever said that.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’
He sniggers. Idiot.
‘And anyway, she’s more than our cleaner. She’s our friend. Which is why she’s here.’
Though I feel ashamed to call her ‘friend’ when really I know so little about her. When she looks happier than I’ve seen her in a long time.
The West Country Winery Page 5
