With her usual care, Hitch walked backwards out of the coop and placed the eggs in the straw pannier before going back and securing the double fence. She stood by the enclosed run and gazed down the paddock towards the horizon as the sun began to peep over the curve of the hill. At this moment every day, if conditions were right and she was in time to see it, the wide sweep of the River Severn that formed the natural boundary to their farm lit up like fire, reflecting the early rays of the sun. It was like magic, the very best part of her day.
Hitch took a deep breath and stared out over the horizon. ‘I wish . . . I wish . . .’
‘What are you standing gawping at?’ Emery interrupted from behind.
Hitch closed her eyes. ‘I wish that Emery would fall down a deep bloody hole and never come out,’ she whispered, opening her eyes in time to see the fire on the water disappear as quickly as it had flared. It was his knack to destroy any moment of joy she could find. She wished he would shove off for good. She was on to him, not as easily fooled as her mum and Pops. Emery wanted the farm, and with Jonathan out of the way he thought it possible.
‘Because if it’s the case you’ve got nothing to do, just let me know – there’s plenty wants doing in the lower field today and grain wants humping from the storeroom. We could use a spare pair of hands, even bloody useless ones like yours!’ he said, chuckling.
‘I don’t work for you!’
‘Not yet,’ he said, and winked.
Hitch ignored him and made her way back towards Big Barn to retrieve Buddy and head to the kitchen. Emery’s words cut to the quick, but she was confident in her own ability to carry out farm work. She’d learned from the very best – her parents.
Spying a crop of burnt-orange marigolds, a welcome flash of colour in the brown landscape at this time of year, she scooted past and ran her fingers over the soft, puff-headed flowers. She picked one and laid it atop her clutch of eggs. There were two paying bed-and-breakfast guests who had stayed last night. Mr and Mrs Silvioni from New York City.
Noo Yoyk was how the woman had said it. Hitch very much liked Mrs Silvioni’s pencilled-in eyebrows, her fancy hair and her gravelly voice. She made Hitch think of faraway places and the movies, and just talking to her was enough in some small way to satisfy her dream of travel.
Buddy settled into his soft bed behind the back door while Hitch took up her favourite spot in front of the range. She heated up the blackened skillet, popping in a nub of bacon fat before putting it on the hottest plate of the range, waiting until it sizzled before carefully laying six fat slices of home-cured bacon in its depths and watching them slowly change colour. At the same time, she cut thick slices of her mum’s crusty white cobbler and laid some on the worn round breadboard, along with four pats of Waycott Farm butter and two white ramekins: one filled with raspberry jam and the other with bitter orange marmalade. When the bacon was crisp, the fat rendered and turned golden, she took two more thick slices of bread and laid them in the fat, watching as they soaked up the flavoured grease and they too turned a happy shade of honey-brown. With the bacon and fried bread kept warm in the bottom oven, she now fried two rounds of home-made black pudding and four skinny sausages while heating a tin of baked beans in the saucepan. Once the coffee was brewed, the teapot warmed and milk poured into a daintily painted pottery jug – by all accounts, older than herself – she set one end of the dark mahogany table in the dining room. A fire blazed in the grate, Pops’s handiwork, transforming the wood-panelled room into a space that was warm and homely, with long flames licking the fireplace as logs hissed, cracked and popped their morning greeting.
Hitch placed the loaded breadboard, milk jug, cups, saucers, cutlery and a small green earthenware bud vase holding the single marigold bloom on the table and rushed back to the kitchen.
Her mum came through the back door, fresh from sorting and distributing feed for the limited number of livestock. ‘Breakfast on, my love? They want an early start.’ Her mum, always too busy for small talk, cut to the chase.
‘Nearly done,’ Hitch replied, as she reached for the jewel in the breakfast – two fat, freshly laid eggs, still slightly warm, in the base of her palm.
‘That’s a good girl.’ Her mum scrutinised her from the table, looking up occasionally as she scribbled a list.
Hitch took a clean pan and drizzled oil into it before cracking the eggs, watching the shiny yolks gleam like orbs of golden sunshine as they bubbled and cooked against the gloom.
She loaded up two plates with the gargantuan feast and walked through to the dining room, where Mr and Mrs Silvioni had taken seats and were admiring the fire, each with a cup of coffee in their hands.
‘Good morning,’ she said with a smile.
‘Good morning, dear. That’s great coffee!’ Mrs Silvioni lifted the cup towards her as if in congratulation.
Cworfee . . .
‘Do you need a hand with that?’
The woman made as if to stand and Hitch shook her head. With her twisted foot and the fingers on her right side permanently crooked, it was a common misconception that she might need help by those with feet of the correct design and fully flexing digits. Hitch didn’t doubt that it came from a place of kindness and a willingness to assist, but it rarely occurred to people that this was her normal, and that since her first breath on earth she had more than figured out how to overcome and adapt.
‘I can manage, but thank you.’
‘Oh, my goodness, will you look at that breakfast! It’s a feast is what it is! That’ll keep us goin’ till dinner!’
Hitch liked this moment the best, placing the lovingly cooked breakfast in front of guests, watching their eyes widen in desire and their smiles break. It felt nice to be appreciated.
‘We’re here visiting our daughter. She’s at Bristol University, studying Biology.’
Dawtah . . . Their dawtah, a lucky girl who got to go to college and to travel to the other side of the Pond . . .
‘She’s staying in Wills Hall. Do you know it?’
Hitch shook her head.
‘It’s fancy! Isn’t it, Tony?’
Mr Silvioni nodded. ‘Uh-huh, real fancy!’
‘It is! Like something out of Harry Potter. Do you know it, Wills Hall?’ she asked again.
Hitch wished she could give a different answer, as it was clearly of importance to the woman. She shook her head. ‘I don’t go into Bristol.’
‘What, neh-vah?’ Mrs Silvioni questioned in her nasal twang, and sat back with her hand on her chest, her flame-red nails grasping at the wool of her jersey. Hitch couldn’t tell whether this was in shock or in pity.
‘No, but I’d like to go and see it. I’d like to go to lots of places. I’d love to travel around, especially to New York. One day. I’ve seen it on TV and in the movies.’
‘Morning, all. Sorry about Hitch – she does like to stand and chat, don’t you, love?’ Her mum placed her hand briefly on her shoulder and it made her feel like a naughty child who’d inadvertently done or said the wrong thing. Maybe she had?
Her mum continued: ‘I’m sure you want to be left alone to eat your breakfast.’
Hitch felt her cheeks flame at the exchange. Despite the sing-song nature of her mum’s tone, it still felt like a public scolding, the kind you might give a kid, and not a twenty-five-year-old woman who was capable of looking after a beautiful batch of hens and collecting their magical eggs.
Mr and Mrs Silvioni gathered their cutlery and began to tuck in, but were now a little subdued, as if they too felt suitably admonished at having inadvertently broken the rules.
Hitch walked through to the kitchen sink and ran it full of hot, soapy water before submerging the skillet and pan into its fragrant depths. Grasping the scourer, she plunged her hands into the foam.
‘They said they wanted an early start, Hitch. I thought it best to come and grab you.’
‘We were only chatting.’
‘I know, darlin’.’
Hitch hated the
way her mum used a pitying tone, making her feel as though she had once again missed the point.
She heard Mrs Silvioni shout out, ‘This is the best – just dee-lish-us!’
Hitch smiled. She had made Mrs Silvioni happy and this made her happy.
She studied her reflection in the mottled glass of the windowpane and thought that in the early morning light, with her reflection a little smudged, she looked quite normal, pretty even. Her hair sat over her shoulder in its thick, shiny braid and her chin looked a good shape, her neck in nice proportion to her broad shoulders. But what you couldn’t see clearly was the thick, puckered line that ran from the top of her lip to the bottom of her nose, a rather jagged cut where her lip had been stitched by an amateur or impatient surgeon, and her nickname arose because of the resulting hitch to her mouth.
‘When they’re done, start on the bedroom, can you? We’ve got a family of three coming in tonight, the MacDonalds, and they’ll need the trundle bed brought in for the little ’un,’ her mum instructed. ‘Can you manage?’
‘I can, Mum,’ Hitch said, nodding, then set about scrubbing the pan in her hand. Cworfee . . . Dawtah . . . she smiled and practised the sounds of New York in her head.
I know that I’m lonely.
I know that the years slip by more quickly each year.
I know that I’m fed up with living on this treadmill.
I know spending time with my chickens is the best part of my day.
I know that I hate Emery.
I know that I’m stuck.
I know that no one will ever love me.
THREE
Hitch cleaned the downstairs of the farmhouse, scrubbing the flagstone floors on her hands and knees with a stiff wooden-backed brush and a bucket of hot, soapy water. Breaking from the rhythm of her scratchy chore, she glanced at the ebonised clock on the mantelpiece. It was a little after three o’clock and she knew she should start thinking about tea and cake in a bit, another food marker that punctuated her day. She’d read once that an army marched on its stomach and she understood – it was the same for farmers.
She rose and rubbed her aching knees before making her way into the yard to tip the bucketful of grubby water on to the flower beds. She then polished the brass grate of the fireplace and quickly dusted the ornaments on the mantelpiece, returning them to the exact same spots where Grandma Elsie and possibly even Great-Grandma Mimi had placed them all those years ago. Running her finger over the once-grand oil painting over the fireplace, which now bore a sooty echo around its slightly battered gilt frame, she smiled at how her family wasn’t exactly big on replacing anything, or on change in general. Hence the same furnishings, the same food, the same routine, the same life handed down from one generation to the next, a rural baton greased by the hardship of farming life that made it harder and harder to grip with every passing year.
Lucky Jonathan . . .
She swallowed the thought and the associated spike of envy as soon as it flared. There was no time to think on things too much. Not today, not any day. There was too much work to do.
Always too much work to do.
After feeding Buddy, she browned the lamb in a pan on the stove and lobbed in chunks of onion, carrot, turnip and potato. Along with a handful of herbs and a jug full of stock, she then sprinkled the whole thing with ground pepper and left the stew in the oven to simmer nicely. Next she wheeled the trundle bed from the big closet on the landing into one of the two guest bedrooms. Mr and Mrs Silvioni had seemed like nice people and Hitch wasn’t in the least bit surprised to see that they had stripped the bed and folded the linen for her to collect easily. They had also left the bathroom neat and tidy, without damp towels thrown hither and thither, as some were wont to do. This behaviour angered her; she guessed the perpetrators were unlikely to do such things in their own home. The Silvionis had even opened the bedroom window, ridding the room of that morning smell, which wasn’t particularly pleasant when it was your own; even less so when it was someone else’s.
She took pleasure, as always, in pummelling the pillows; it warmed her, bunching her fists as she knocked the feathers nice and plump, ready for the clean pillow protector and slip. She always thought that pillows deserved special treatment – the things that cradled a person’s head and took pride of place on the freshly laundered antique brass bed with its comforting dip in the middle. She ran her fingers over their surface, newly encased in starched white cotton, and smiled. Having straightened the curtains, dusted every surface and made the bed, paying particular attention to the crisp white duvet cover, so that it lay taut and wrinkle free, she placed the vase with the single marigold bloom she had picked earlier on the nightstand.
Hitch made the bathroom shine as best she could. It was easy to achieve an immaculate finish on the mirrors and new copper pipework, but on the Victorian enamelled bath, where the surface had thinned in places, and on the old, dulled brass taps, it was easier said than done. She ran the ancient, clunking vacuum cleaner over the floral-patterned rug, replenished the tea and coffee tray and stood back to admire her efforts.
‘Can you get my dawtah some cworfee?’ she asked out loud.
‘Who in God’s name are you talking to?’ her mum called from the landing.
‘Myself.’ A little embarrassed, she swallowed and tucked stray wisps of hair behind her ears.
‘Thought you might have a visitor! Frightened the life out of me!’ her mum said, chuckling.
‘Who’d visit me, Mum?’
Her mother sighed and gave the embarrassed quick shake of her head that she’d been giving for some years now when she was stumped for an answer. ‘This room done, love?’
‘Yep.’ Hitch stood back to allow her a clear view.
‘Good, that’s one job out of the way.’
‘I thought I’d go and clean the girls out, change their bedding. Have a little chat.’
Again the sigh and short shake of her mum’s ageing grey head. ‘The girls? You do know they’re chickens, don’t you?’ she offered softly.
I had noticed, yes, mainly because of the feathers and beak thing. That, and they had no opinion on Game of Thrones when I asked them . . .
‘I just call them that,’ Hitch said, staring down at the duster in her hand.
‘I know,’ her mum said, crinkling her eyes. ‘Everything is okay, my love, everything is okay.’ She walked over and smoothed the hair from her daughter’s forehead, the way she had been doing ever since Hitch was little.
‘Louise hasn’t invited me to her party, Mummy, and she invited the whole class!’
‘Don’t cry, my little love. Everything is okay . . .’
‘No one picked me, Mum! We had to make pairs for country dancing and I had to do it on my own because no one would hold my hand!’
‘Well, it’s their loss. Everything is okay, my little one . . .’
‘No one’s asked me to Prom – I’m not going, what’s the point?’
‘Don’t cry my, little love. Prom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Everything is okay . . .’
‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’ came the call up the back stairs.
‘You all right to go and make it?’ her mum enquired, with a look that made Hitch want to scream.
‘Sure.’
She stood and watched as her mother muttered beneath her breath, as if offering up a silent prayer, as she trod the creaking corridor back towards the rear bedroom.
Hitch made her way down to the kitchen, carrying the basket of dirty linen to take out to Big Barn, where the washing machine, the tumble dryer with the dodgy door and the ironing board lived. She looked up at the darkening sky, sorry that today there would be no pegging out. It was a job she loved in the summer months or when the weather allowed. In the sunshine she would make her way to the paddock, where a long washing line supported by a slender wooden pole was strung between tall posts across the field. Today, as if burdened by its redundancy, the line sagged forlornly and moved slowly in the saddest dance,
taken by the wind. Instead she would be working indoors in the gloom: inhaling the scent of clean cotton; turning over the fresh, warm sheets and towels; folding them with precision and stacking them in a neat pile as the breeze came in through the open window. More than once during such sessions a butterfly or a little bird would fly in and perch on a sill or rafter, watching her at work. She would howl with laughter. ‘Who am I – Snow White?’
Sometimes she would put the radio on and have a little bop. But in these colder, greyer times of year, with the farm in the grip of autumn, it was a different story. On certain days the wind whistled up from the river and over the bottom levels, cold enough to strip the flesh from her bones and leave her hands red and aching with the chill, and on those days she didn’t enjoy the chore half as much. She put the basket outside the back door.
Buddy loped over and stood next to her, his favourite place to be.
‘Hello, my boy,’ she said, reaching down to pet his warm flank.
Pops and Emery shucked off their boots and took their afternoon break at the kitchen table, flexing their toes inside their heavy socks. Giving the sigh of the weary, they stretched their aching arms over their heads, turning to draw warmth from the open door of the range as they yawned and cricked their necks. With the Gazette spread open between them on the table, they combed articles, following the print with busted, dirty fingernails, enjoying the respite from the hard physical work in the fields.
‘All right, Pops?’ Hitch smiled at the man she loved, while filling the flat-bottomed kettle and placing it on the hot plate of the stove.
‘Not bad, my little lovely, not bad. Mum got any of her cake lying around?’ He pointed his nose in the direction of the mismatched cake tins stacked around the almost redundant microwave.
‘For you.’ She lifted and shook the tins, some now quite worn in places, but heirlooms in their own way. Her Grandma Elsie used to say, ‘No cake can be made without love . . .’ and Hitch knew that each of these tins had contained a succession of cakes, while endless tea was poured from the pot, all made with love by her kin. Tea and cake was not so much a treat as part of their working lives. It was not Hitch, however, but her mum who was the baker of the house. She had told Hitch many years ago that one of her essential tasks, as with her mother before her, was to bake for the man she loved. It was a rare affectionate expression from a woman who spoke, lived and stared at her husband as if she were constantly exasperated. But love him she must, as the fruit cake, lemon drizzle, ginger loaf, coffee and walnut or carrot cake, almond sponge, apple and walnut loaf and many others just kept on coming.
The Things I Know Page 3
