Hitch handled the cake tins with care, more than aware that not only had she not quite mastered the art of baking herself but also that she had no one to bake for. There was no man she loved, other than Pops and her brother. Not that she had time for such thoughts today. She rooted around until she found a hunk of fruit cake and cut her dad a generous wedge, placing it in front of him on one of her Grandma Elsie’s old green side plates. It was a little chipped and the glaze had worn thin in places, but the fluted gilt edge and exquisite art deco grooves meant it carried the echo of past grandeur and was still a thing of beauty, to her at least.
‘That’s my girl!’ He patted her arm as she put the plate in front of him. She saw the ever-closer creep of age on her dad’s skin, and it bothered her, his weather-beaten face, deep furrows etched on his brow from rain, sun and worry. Farming was a risky business and it never seemed to get any easier. It was as if, year after year, they scrabbled in the stones, trying to get a foothold, slipping in the mud as their hands reached for the solid brick that crumbled beneath their touch.
Her whole life long they had lurched from famine to feast and back again. The bed-and-breakfast brought in a pretty sum but, in the grand scheme of things, barely enough to run the oil for the range. It had always felt this way, as if they hung on by a thread, stitching each small sum of money from so many different ventures – selling eggs and fresh-cut flowers, the bed-and-breakfast, cattle, crops, even running tractor repairs – into a patchwork quilt to wrap themselves in as they tried to keep the cold from the door. Every penny went into the coffer that was never even close to full. They lived with the flutter of anxiety in their chests, knowing that one bout of bad weather, one ruined crop, one change in the season, sun or rain arriving too early or too late, and they just might sink into the furrows that surrounded them. They all worked very hard, just to stand still.
Hitch had made a couple of suggestions, which had only raised a laugh of dismissal, if not a titter. ‘We could do posh camping – glamping! I’ve read about it: people pay a lot to sleep in a fancy tent, and we have the space!’ She recalled how her mum and dad had exchanged a look that translated as Oh, bless her! and it made her want to spit.
‘Where’s my cake?’ Emery stuck out his bottom lip like a grotesque toddler.
‘I have absolutely no bloody idea,’ she whispered, as she cut him a much smaller slice and handed it to him before pouring two mugs of tea, remembering his biting comments of earlier.
Emery eyed his uncle’s plate and laughed softly through his nose as he almost swallowed his piece of cake whole.
‘Ooh, I got a card from Jonathan!’ As if just now remembering it was there, her dad reached into his cardigan pocket, producing a postcard with a picture of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on the front. He held it up so she could see the rugged snow-capped mountains set against the vast blue sky.
‘Ain’t that something?’ he beamed, as if being in receipt of such a picture was as good as beholding the sight for himself, and maybe, for him, it was.
But not for her.
She wanted to climb those mountains, drink in the sweet, clean air. She wanted to saddle up and canter the paths, walk among the rocky outcrops looking at the trees and the wide-wing-spanned, hooked-beaked eagles that hunted there. She wanted to meet a cowboy and eat beans with him by an open fire where flames flickered against the night sky. There were lots of things she wanted to do, like going to New York and ordering cworfee for her dawtah . . .
‘It says he’s got a new job on the ranch; he’s going to be a loper.’ He held the card close to his face. ‘L-O-P-E-R,’ he spelled out. ‘I think that’s how you say it. I don’t rightly know what it is, but I know it means he’s with the horses morning, noon and night, just the way he likes it.’
‘Lucky boy,’ Emery snapped, with an air of sarcasm entirely lost on her lovely dad, who only ever wanted to see the best in people, even her.
‘He is that, but you know, Emery,’ he said with a smile, his big, dirt-encrusted hands now breaking his wedge of cake in two and handing half to his nephew, ‘you make your own luck. I do believe that. He works hard, I’m sure – different work to us, yes, and I admit it must be nice to toil with the warmth of that sunshine on your back, instead of frost creeping up your limbs, and living on a fancy ranch sounds lovely, but I know our Jonathan and I know he’s a worker.’
Hitch chose not to comment, employing the old adage, ignored by her cousin, that if you had nothing nice to say, then best say nothing at all. She still found it hard to fathom how her younger brother, the ink barely dried on his degree certificate from the fancy Cirencester Agricultural College – their mum and dad had dug deep to make sure he didn’t go without while he was there – had then just jumped on a plane to go and work on some stranger’s farm for no more than board and lodging, while his family nearly ran themselves into the ground trying to run their own, in the vain hope that one day they might be able to pass the deeds on to him. It was unquestioned, his inheritance, as the boy of the family, the one with the farming know-how that came by way of a fancy scroll and the simple fact that this was how it had always been. Waycott Farm – handed down from father to son.
Hitch didn’t care much about that, knowing with certainty that, whether it was Pops or Jonathan who sat at the head of the table, she would always have a place at it too. Whether or not it was a place she wanted to occupy was a whole other story. The simple truth was that she missed her brother. She missed him so much her stomach ached with it.
Her mum, and Pops in particular, still held fast to the notion that he would be home any day to dump his duffel bag in his old room, neck a mug of tea, don his wellington boots, grab the tractor keys and claim what was rightfully his, carrying on as if he’d never been away. Hitch hoped they were right, but to her it was obvious that her little brother was making a life, making memories, becoming one with that breathtaking landscape of the Wild West and planning a future that had no place in it for their muddy little farm on the banks of the Severn. And her biggest fear was that her cousin Emery might just swoop in and take over, and if that happened, she knew her place at the table was far from certain.
She still felt a little let down by her brother, but in recent months and after giving it much thought she knew her feelings were largely rooted in disappointment. She was the eldest, and while she yearned to travel, she had never thought to bolt. Hitch had grown up with the belief that they were all in it together, that she was safest working and living within the walls of Waycott Farm and that it was only by working and living as a unit, sharing the load, that they all survived. Recently, however, she’d been feeling the heartbreak of lament, fearing that, as she approached her late twenties, she was well and truly stuck here. This place was her provider, her haven and her jailer.
It was complicated.
Her conflicted feelings over the farm and her place in it had only intensified when her parents saw fit to bring cousin Emery into their home.
The day he had arrived, without fair warning, she’d gone into Big Barn and lain on the battered dog sofa, shivering under Buddy’s blanket, despite the warmth of that sunny June day. It was the way he lorded it over her and, in some ways, her parents too – there was no respect, as if he were doing them a favour, when she knew for a fact he was paid a good wage, the only one among them who was. And his board and lodging were free. It was now late October and she had got no more used to having him around than on that first day. He’d always been mean to her, his nastiness wrapped in jokes she found far from funny, and when, as a child, she had complained to her parents, they would tut and tell her he meant nothing by it, he was just a kid! And at the end of the day, he was kin.
Hitch pulled on her beanie and Barbour and whistled to Buddy and the two left the kitchen. She loaded the washing machine in Big Barn and shut in her beloved dog. ‘Back in a mo, Bud,’ she said, as she made her way over to the chicken coop.
The hens were out in the run, pecking around in the grass and
gossiping. Hitch pulled back the fencing gates and made her way inside, wary of her footfall.
‘Hello, girls! How are we doing? How are you, Mrs Cluck? And look at you, Daisy Duke – you look very pretty today. And what’s this? Ah, who’s a clever girl?’ She reached down into the nest box and plucked out a fresh egg. ‘Helga! You’re a marvel. Thank you!’ With the egg in her hand, she carefully refastened the fences and walked back to Big Barn with the prize resting in her hand.
She slid back the door and jolted at the sight of Emery sitting with Buddy on the saggy sofa. He was smoking.
‘No smoking in here. It’s a fire risk.’
‘Oh yeah?’ He blew a smoke ring into the air. ‘What’re you going to do? Tell your dad? I’m scared!’
‘Come on, Buddy!’ She ignored the horrible man as Buddy ran to her. ‘Good boy.’ She kept her hand on the top of his head, taking comfort from the warmth of his coat as they made their way back to the kitchen. She’d stir the lamb, add the softer veg, season again and then see about setting the fires, ready for lighting later, when the new bed-and-breakfast guests arrived.
She washed her hands, warming them under the hot tap before taking her favourite place at the range, where she stared at the postcard of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which her dad had propped up on the shelf. She thought of Jonathan and wondered what it might be like to wake each day in the sunshine.
The front doorbell drew her from her musings and Hitch welcomed Mr and Mrs MacDonald, giving them a key to the front door and saying hello to their little boy, who hid behind his mum’s legs.
‘He’s a bit shy,’ his dad explained, and averted his gaze, the way some people did. She knew it was done out of politeness, so they didn’t stare, didn’t make her feel uncomfortable, didn’t draw attention to her scar, her face, but the fact that they felt the need to look away at all meant it had the very opposite effect. And in spite of Mr Macdonald’s very best efforts, she felt her face colour under his lack of scrutiny.
It made her feel ugly.
Uglier.
Dr Newson had said she might be able to have further surgery, but she was beyond scared – petrified, in fact – remembering perfectly what it had felt like as a kid to wake post-operation with pain from an infection that felt like fire, everyone telling her it shouldn’t be that bad, and her screaming at them that it was. Her fear of further surgery was multi-layered – supposing they made her condition worse? And what did it really matter anyway? She never saw anyone important, never went anywhere, never did anything.
Standing now in the bathroom, she ran her brush through her long hair, letting it loose about her shoulders. Next she applied a liberal spray of the perfume her brother had sent for Christmas. It had arrived beautifully wrapped in a fancy box with a gold ribbon. She spritzed her neck and wrists and finally dabbed a little bronzer over her cheeks. Hitch looked back at herself in the mirror and smiled, her hand held over her mouth, before making her way back down the creaking stairs.
‘This is proper tasty, thank you.’ Pops winked at her and she mopped up his gratitude like a sponge. ‘Where you off to, my lovely – somewhere nice?’ he asked, as if she had a whole host of options and a whole heap of choice. He sat at the table with her mum and Emery, all devouring the lamb stew, the peppery scent of which filled the room.
‘Just up the Barley Mow.’ She gave a gentle laugh, as if she ever went anywhere else.
‘Are you driving?’ her dad asked, spooning the soft lamb and a chunk of carrot into his mouth.
‘Yep, I’ll take the pickup, Dad, if that’s okay? I won’t be late.’
‘Should think not – you’ve got an early start, my lovely, and I like to know you’re tucked up safe. You know we don’t sleep properly until you’re in,’ her mum reminded her, through her own mouthful.
Hitch glanced at the postcard high up on the shelf and wondered how it was that Jonathan not only got to go to bed at a time of his own choosing without their mum’s scrutiny, but he got to do it in another bloody country.
She climbed into the ancient, mud-caked Subaru and switched on the engine, letting the cab warm a little before putting the radio on and turning up the volume. She drove the lanes at a fierce speed, shifting up and down the gears with the confidence of someone who knew every inch of ground and every twist and turn in the road. Her heart rate rose at the prospect of meeting someone travelling at equal speed in the opposite direction and knowing there would be neither time nor space to avoid the inevitable. Her thumping heart was accompanied by the booming beat of Kylie that blared from her cranked-down windows.
By the time she arrived at the remote Barley Mow, whose crumbling exterior gave the best hint of the sticky-floored dive of a pub inside, her blood was pumping fast and she was feeling pretty good. She drove the truck to the dark, far corner of the car park before throwing the keys into her handbag. With a final tousle to her hair and swallowing the spike of nerves in her throat, she pushed open the door and let her eyes sweep the place. Several familiar faces turned to look at her as she made her way in.
‘Hiya, Hitch, what can I get you?’ Shelley asked from behind the bar.
‘Half of cider, please.’
‘How’s your brother doing?’
‘Good.’
‘You must miss him. I know I do. He was the only decent chap to look at around here! And so polite – reckon that’s what a fancy college does for you!’
Hitch nodded and thought that, had Jonathan stayed, Shelley might have been a nice girlfriend for him after all. She climbed on to a high stool and rested her elbows on the bar. A glance in the direction of the pool table told her that Tarran Buttermore and his gang were in. She made out that she hadn’t seen their nudges, smirks and comments whispered behind cupped palms. He looked up and smiled at her; she looked away instantly, sending her long hair shivering down her back, but not without letting him see the beginning of her own smile.
The evening, as ever, passed in a haze of chit-chat with Shelley about acquaintances they had in common, swapping small talk and gossip about men and women from school or in the community whose names were vaguely familiar. A long list of people who, according to Shelley, had had babies, got divorced, lost a parent, moved to Australia or, as in the case of Katrina Hopkirk, who was two years above them in school, had got into a fight and been arrested in Magaluf. They were the usual tales and titbits of life exchanged over every bar in every country all over the world and yet, when spoken in her postcode, using names that had been read out either side of hers in the class register, the news felt personal and unique.
It was a little before eleven when the bell rang out behind the bar.
‘Time, please, ladies and gentlemen!’ Shelley called. ‘Not that I can see many gentlemen here, only you lot!’
‘Not many ladies either, isn’t that right, Hitch?’ Tarran stood behind her now. His hot breath sent goose bumps over her skin and the scent of his sweat stirred something deep in her gut.
She looked up at him coyly and swung her legs from the stool before making her way out to the car park. Tarran walked close behind and she heard Digger yell something about a rematch and the boys laughed. Truth be told, she didn’t like him or his friends that much, cocky and loud, but she did like the way he looked in his tight jeans and white T-shirt beneath his red-and-black plaid shirt. Jonathan had said once before he left that, when there was little choice, it was easy to gravitate towards any opportunity, and Hitch thought now how true that was – Tarran was the only man who had ever shown any romantic interest in her. Her heart boomed in her chest and her palms began to sweat at the thought that tonight he might just like the way she looked too. Standing on the tarmac, she slowly ferreted in her bag for the keys to the truck. Glancing back at Tarran, she waited, giving him time to make a move.
Her thoughts flitted to that night three years ago when the two had climbed drunkenly up into the cab of the truck and fallen on to the wide front seats, fumbling for zippers, buttons and anything else that
at that moment hindered their urgent need for contact. A night that had started with such promise but had ended in shame when, in a moment of distraction, she had tried to kiss him. Tarran had pulled his head back and pushed her chin upwards with the heel of his hand, where it stayed, her head snapped back against the window until he was done. Remembering the way she had felt, like a thing discarded, had robbed her of any confidence.
If he liked you, Hitch, he would have made a move within the last three years, you dummy! Things would have happened, developed, but they didn’t. What are you thinking? You don’t even like him, not really, you only like the idea of him, of being wanted . . .
No matter how much it upset her, she understood his reluctance, his aloofness. Who would want to kiss someone like her?
Her boldness evaporated and she quickened her pace towards the truck, wanting nothing more than to get home, mortified that she had considered anything else. Sitting in the driver’s seat with the hot flush of embarrassment on her cheeks, she looked up at the moon through the side window. It was big and beautiful and she felt herself slip away to a time and place where she was someone else. Someone a man wanted to kiss on the mouth and not simply climb on top of once in the dark, across the front seats of the stinky pickup, where muck and straw lined the footwells, in the dimly lit corner of a pub car park in the middle of bloody nowhere.
The Things I Know Page 4
