David insists the bales are left to be unloaded the next day. ‘You should rest, mate, after your accident. Let’s have a smoke. Come on, let’s go back to the farmhouse.’
‘Clean the cut for him!’ Maggie shouts as her brother leaves with Simon. She turns to Amy. ‘How can you stand living with him? He’s selfish and lazy and never takes responsibility for anything that doesn’t suit him.’
‘He was really worried about Simon. He just felt a bit defensive,’ she says.
‘I’m not sure he cares that much. Or, frankly, sees what’s going on right under his nose.’ Maggie stares at her. ‘Just as well, eh?’
If only Eleanor had come with him. Seymour assured her that the ‘the hippies’, as she called them, would not be hogging the bathroom or spread-eagling themselves across the sofas. For they lived across the yard in the cottage, he emphasised. He didn’t mention Julian was still in the farmhouse. He couldn’t force him to live in that crowded little cottage.
But Eleanor refused. If she was there Seymour would not galvanise himself to have ‘the conversation’ that needed to be had with ‘the scroungers’. Eleanor could be forthright, cruel sometimes, but she had a point. If Julian’s friends dreamed of living off the land, let them go and try it for themselves without the ‘shield of Stratton’. Did they not realise that the 60s were long gone?
Less necessary was her quip that having them around let Seymour to indulge a fantasy that he was their age. Cruel of her to reiterate the difference in years.
Perhaps she was right. Jars of jam lining the larder shelves and the freezer packed to the hilt with frozen beans sealed with the suburban twist were domestic signs he could tolerate. But when he found his records filed in alphabetical order that was different. Seymour disapproved of disapproval, of course, but order – or more precisely – someone else’s order – was not the way he wanted to live. Julian’s pals needed to move along.
Now the cottage was habitable, Bob was free for the next job; building a darkroom for Seymour, a space where he could work in peace. Then perhaps he’d think about improvements to the farmhouse. Eleanor might be persuaded to visit more often if the place was tarted up.
Seymour opens a bottle of red wine and pours himself a glass. He puts on the live Randy Newman album to help him think. He’ll have to let Amy down, of course: he’ll be gentle. Perhaps it had been wrong of him to start sleeping with her? But the girl had had such a difficult time, losing her mother and so on, and his attentions seemed to help. She said it was comforting to talk to him. He couldn’t imagine why. What the young failed to realise is that everyone makes mistakes; age simply provides experience in covering them up.
Despite her rose-tinted chatter about creating a new society, he likes her and is obsessed with her body. But he has felt this way about other women he has had to ‘bid farewell’ to. From long experience he knows the feelings pass.
It will feel uncharacteristic but he will talk about money. He is a man of magnanimity and generous impulse, not an accountant. But penury will be his excuse. He’ll tell Julian’s four friends that that he needs to rent the cottage out in order to raise cash. Sorry and all that, but they’ll have to find somewhere else to live.
At seven o’clock, Amy appears in the kitchen. She has dressed carefully. She wears David’s white shirt over tight jeans and clogs she’d painted silver. Her hair is pinned up high; a few pale strands trail her neck. She feels good. She’s missed her lover. She brushes his lips with her fingers as she wafts past. They’re alone. Everyone else is in the cottage getting smashed.
‘You’re glamorous,’ he says, ‘and just so you can cook supper. I’m flattered. Wine?’
‘Yes, thanks. You know everything we’re eating tonight was grown here,’ she says with pride. ‘Spinach and Daisy-cheese pie, tomatoes with berries and yoghurt for pudding. I think more and more people will want to live together communally to buy and grow their own food, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know, sounds a bit unlikely to me. Anyway, the grapes in the wine – they aren’t ours – though if what those climate scaremongers say is right, soon I can have my own vineyard…’
‘…and I’ll squish the grapes between my thighs,’ she says suggestively.
She’s hard to resist. ‘You’re so sweet,’ he replies, licking her ear, ‘and you make a very good housekeeper.’
She ignores the remark.
When she opens the oven door, the warm air lifts the hair off her face. He sees she’s troubled.
‘My father wants me home for his birthday next month. He’s even sent money for the train fare. I don’t want to go. I’m dreading it.’
He’s seen this sudden switch in mood before. Its baffling how can she be cheery one minute and grim the next. ‘Your father hasn’t seen you in a while. I’m sure he’s missing you,’ Seymour says.
‘He’s got the lovely Vi, hasn’t he?’ she replies grimly.
The front door bangs open. Maggie comes into the kitchen with a handful of wildflowers. Simon follows behind.
‘Hi Seymour,’ they beam, and begin to set the table and light the candles.
Then David arrives with a bottle of wine that Seymour knows is sold in the village shop and will no doubt see charged to his account.
‘Great to see you, man,’ David says clapping him on the arm. ‘Good time in London?’
‘Something smells good.’ Julian slips into a seat at the table.
Dishes of food are passed around and they eat and talk. They’re charming and clever kids, thinks Seymour. The stuttering Simon, the languid David and the lovely girls, the candlelight bouncing off their shiny faces. He’s going to feel mean kicking them off the farm. The wine mellows his determination. He’ll do it in stages, let them down gently. He’ll start by suggesting they need to find jobs.
But not tonight. Right now, he’s wondering if he’d be able to slip away with Amy. Her boyfriend looks particularly dopey tonight. If David starts playing guitar, which he does interminably, it might just be possible to go to the barn for what could be called a digestif.
21
Next morning, Seymour goes out and returns several hours later towing behind the Land Rover a 1920s ringmaster’s wagon, the kind once used by travelling circus performers. He’d seen an advertisement in the paper and couldn’t resist. Wood-panelled walls, fitted cupboards, cut-glass mirrors, a wood-burning stove and a snug double bed, the caravan would make a quirky place for guests to stay.
David, Amy, Simon and Maggie are woken by the sound of a vehicle in the cottage’s back garden. They emerge from the cottage bleary-eyed.
‘Afternoon!’ Seymour says. ‘Beautiful thing, isn’t it? I couldn’t resist buying it.’
At the same time, Julian appears. ‘Hi Dad. Where did you slip off to this morning? Hey, that’s cool.’ He nods at the wagon.
‘I’m glad you’re here, too. Let’s get a cup of tea. We need to talk.’ He looks shifty, Maggie thinks and not only because he’s wearing that Rod Stewart Every Picture Tells A Story t-shirt. Does the man not know he looks ridiculous? They crowd into the cottage kitchen.
‘Now that the work here is finished, there are a few changes needed at Wyld Farm.’
It was out of character for Seymour to sound so serious. David stops stirring his tea. ‘Really? What do you mean? Why?’
‘Things aren’t going so well for me at the moment. A bit tough. I haven’t mentioned this but… I’m not able to fund everything anymore. It’s time we talked about work. You lot need to find employment, get jobs. Make a contribution, I suppose.’
It’s bizarre. Seymour never talked about money. ‘Alright. Of course we can try. It might be tricky…’ Amy ventures.
But Julian blurts: ‘God, Dad! I can’t believe you’re being so heavy. My friends have been doing the right thing here. This is a bit out of the blue.’
‘Yes, of course, and I’m grateful for what you’ve all done. But the cottage is finished now. I’m thinking about the future.’
‘The future? What’s this about, Dad? Has Eleanor put you up to it?’
‘It’s nothing to do with her, Julian. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for you and your friends…’
‘Oh doesn’t it? Well I don’t agree. We’ve been doing what you wanted. And now you just announce it’s all got to change. I’m not staying here to listen to this nonsense, I’m going to Gerald’s. Anyone coming with me?’
Seymour says: ‘Don’t go over there, Julian.’
‘I can’t talk to you when you’re like this! You’re impossible.’ He bowls out of the cottage; they hear a car driving off.
Seymour looks at the four of them and shrugs. ‘That’s how it’s got to be.’
The rest of the day is peculiar. They sit by the unlit fire; no one can be bothered to chop wood. Amy offers to heat up some leftover soup but no one is hungry. When David starts to play the guitar, Maggie barks at him to stop. A bit later, someone suggests they go for a walk. As they cross the yard, Seymour is getting into his car.
‘I’m going back to London,’ he says, shutting the door.
Amy fights the impulse to stand in front of the car to stop him.
Seymour needs her. What’s he’s hiding?
It was a perfect job. Near enough to cycle on the old-bone shaker and only part time so home by mid-afternoon. Cruel start to the day, though. She has to be at the stables by 7.00am.
Maggie lies against the sun-warmed bricks and rolled a surreptitious cigarette. Malcolm, the ‘head groom’ as he called himself – though why she couldn’t imagine for she was the only other person working at the animal sanctuary – told her smoking was forbidden. A fire risk with the straw and hay.
Slipping the burnt match into her jeans, she draws the smoke down deep. The work is tough but the animals are brilliant: six horses, four ponies and Donny the donkey, grumpy as a hornet but appreciative when his scarred ears were scratched.
Malcolm has really come down in the horsey world. You have to feel sorry for him. Two years ago he’d been working as a groom in a big racing stables somewhere near Newmarket. A fall from a skittish young stallion out ‘on the gallops’, his foot caught in the stirrup. Malcolm got dragged along the ground. The accident left him with concussion, a smashed pelvis and a leg broken in three places. He spent six months in hospital on his back, his plastered leg held up in a hoist.
There was fun to be had flirting with the nurses, he leered, alluding to kisses stolen on the night shift while the Sister wasn’t watching. But lying flat had stopped his ‘bowels moving’. Not until the day he was hauled to his feet by two strapping auxiliaries did things ‘start to move’. Maggie gagged on the graphic detail he provided. Malcolm couldn’t be more than 28 years old. With a lurching limp, his dreams of being a jockey were smashed.
The sun broke over the roof of the barn opposite; the dazzling light made Maggie’s eyes pinch. One more minute in the rays and she’ll get on with the routine. Watering the animals, mucking out the stables, sweeping the yard. It is easy in fine weather, horrible when it pours. She is learning stuff, too. Now the spring grass is growing, the horses and ponies have been ‘turned out’ in the fields. (That was the lingo, Malcolm told her. Turned out meant the animals lived outside all the time). All except Kelpie. The pony has to be brought into the stable during the day.
‘Why, Malcolm? It seems a bit unfair. It’s the summer and he’ll be lonely without the others,’ she complained.
‘But he’ll get laminitis, what you’d call sore feet,’ explained Malcolm dismissively. ‘On summer grass, that pony gets too fat.’
‘And he’ll limp like you!’ she joked. Malcolm didn’t laugh.
Maggie applied for the job. Seymour’s outburst was a bit of a hoot and anyway, she was sick of being short of cash and it might be a way to meet some new people. When the man called to tell her she had the job, said she was lucky, given her lack of experience, that she’d beaten the other candidates, she wondered if there were any. Still, nice to know she succeeded at something.
Carefully stubbing out her roll-up on the concrete, Maggie heads into the field with a halter. Kelpie was easy to catch if you offered him a treat. You just had to be careful of the other animals, especially that greedy little Donny.
It was a terrible shock. The shred of respect that remained for Seymour Stratton vanished when Mrs Morle found the letter. It said the cleaning job she had done for the last fifteen years was finished. Seymour could no longer afford to pay her; Amy was going to be the housekeeper. Mrs Morle had done him proud, he wrote, he was sorry, he wrote, but it was over.
Mrs Morle flung the note across the sitting room; it hit the wall and slipped behind the settee. She wouldn’t cry, not because of him. Him in his fancy car with his fancy friends, buying that ridiculous gypsy caravan, having all those parties for all those people. He could afford to pay for his house to be cleaned. He just didn’t want her anymore.
‘I didn’t think Seymour was such a bread head,’ says David, ‘He can’t make me get a job. I’m signing on. I need time to write music.’
So when David’s giro arrives each week, Amy cashes it at the post office when she’s doing the weekly shop. He also put a card up in the village shop offering guitar lessons. Now every Saturday he teaches a local school boy how to play. Simon has shifts in the pub and is scraping the rust off the wagon. Julian works on his father’s Morgan. There is talk of selling the car for a great deal of money.
Amy has become the housekeeper. Now she cleans the farmhouse as well as doing the washing and cooking. Sometimes she envies Maggie the chance to leave the house, even if her friend assures her that Malcolm and the animal sanctuary visitors are of limited appeal.
But at least being in the farmhouse gave her time to moon to music perfect for her mood; Carole King’s Tapestry. Loose-limbed, powered by the sexual energy Seymour had ignited in her, she dances as she dusts, relishing what they’ve found in each other. One day there will be all the time in the world to linger with their limbs linked. Until then they must be cautious.
She’s not cheating on David; they are exploring different ways of living and soon she will tell him about her lover. As Seymour says, no one should be hidebound by convention. That’s why last weekend, Seymour came down with Eleanor. The woman sashayed into the house like a queen while she, Amy, dragged the washing off the line. Soon, Amy thought, folding the pillow cases, everyone will know the truth. Although Seymour has never said it in so many words, he too longs for the time they will live together openly. They just have to wait for the right moment.
Last Saturday, he propelled her into his bedroom as soon as David left the house to give a guitar lesson. He made love to her frantically.
‘I love having you right here,’ he panted.
It was obvious what he meant.
22
‘It’s good to see you, love,’ says Amy’s father from the driver’s seat. He pushes open the passenger door and she slides inside.
Amy is too anxious to speak on the journey. The car draws up outside the house where she grew up. The street looks subtly different although when she glances up and down, she cannot see anything has changed. She feels she’s being watched and, from the corner of her eye, glimpses a face hiding in the hedge of the house next door. But on closer inspection, the face disappears. Perhaps it was only a leaf glinting in the sun. Grabbing her bag off the back seat of the car, Amy hurries to the front door.
The hall is dark and pinched as though the light has been sucked out. She feels apprehensive, that she must run away. But her father is right behind her, closes the front door with a click. The sound reassures her somehow that it is safe for her to walk into the kitchen. Her father begins to collect cups and saucers for tea; the rattle of china hurts her ears.
‘So how are you?’
He pours milk into the jug her mother always used. He did not appear to notice that the floral pattern on the china has begun to twist and grow over his fingers. Them’s cornflowers, campions and ivy
, says Mrs Morle. Her voice has churning around Amy’s head all day. It’s annoying, sometimes frightening but it won’t stop.
‘You haven’t forgotten it’s my birthday?’ her father says lightly but he sounds concerned.
‘Course not, Dad.’
She digs in her bag for the card she’d bought in a rush at the railway station and hands it to him. There is the dirt etched like spider’s webs on her hands. She carries the farm with her.
‘And I made this for you.’
She pushes something wrapped in brown paper and decorated with coloured dots to make it pretty. It’s a jar of pickled onions, his favourite.
‘Thank you, love. I’ll open these later. Vi’s coming over here to celebrate. We’ll open a bottle of wine, perhaps. That’s alright with you, isn’t it?’
It is not a question. The tea scalds her throat.
‘I’ve got some news for you, Amy, and I hope you’ll be happy for me.’
She stares fiercely, willing him to stop speaking. ‘I didn’t want to tell you on the phone.’ Nervously he fingers the envelope she gave him.
‘I’ve asked Vi to marry me and she’s accepted. We’re engaged. To be married. Maybe next year, I don’t know when exactly.’
The words, proud and solid, hit her one by one like physical blows. Her throat constricts. His mouth is moving, producing words and phrases that she only half-registers. Something about there not being bridesmaids, a ceremony ‘in a register office but it will be nice’.
‘But it’s hardly a year since Mum died, Dad. How can you forget her so quickly, fall in love with someone else and get married? It’s…it’s wrong.’
‘Why can you not be happy for me?’ he replies hotly.
‘How could you?’
Choosing each word carefully, searching as though if only he could find the perfect one to fit, he would make her understand, he says: ‘I have not forgotten your mother, not at all, Amy. But what you do not know, can’t know is, how terribly lonely I have been without your mother.’
Wyld Dreamers: a gripping drama about secrets from the past Page 12
