The Things I Know

by Amanda Prowse

  ‘I might have.’ She smiled at him, with a faint shrug of indifference, before turning her eyes back to the ledger and running her bent finger over the page. ‘Here we go – Mr Grayson-Potts, here for two nights and all paid for!’

  ‘I’m here to go to a seminar – speaking at a hotel tomorrow. Organised by the brokers I work for in London, but I’m talking to people here in Bristol about how I do my job.’

  ‘I see, and you didn’t want to stay right in Bristol? We’re a little way out.’ She wondered if this out-of-towner had booked the farm in error.

  ‘No.’ He seemed to consider this. ‘I’ve stayed in a hotel before, but Sherry, a girl in Accounts, said I could choose a hotel or a farm. I thought I could stay in a big hotel any time and they all look the same, but I’ve never stayed on a farm – so I chose the farm.’

  ‘Right. And you’ve come from London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve been twice.’ She nodded, as if to emphasise this truth that she considered an achievement.

  ‘To London?’

  ‘Yes. I went to Covent Garden and Victoria Street on one trip and the next time I went to Chelsea to visit the flower show with my mum and her friend from the village, Mrs Pepper.’

  ‘I’ve never been to the flower show.’

  ‘Would you like to go?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  Hitch stared at him for a second and wondered if he was about to elaborate in the way most people did, to justify their yes or their no, but instead he stayed silent. She wondered if this was in response to her again inadvertently doing or saying the wrong thing and felt a jolt of unease in her gut. She shut the book firmly and smiled broadly.

  ‘I’ll show you to your room. Follow me!’ She walked through the low-ceilinged dining room and noted the way he stared at the fireplace, which took up a whole wall, letting his eyes linger on the smoky black shadows jumping up the bricks of the inglenook, over the wide stone mantel and up towards the ceiling.

  ‘It smells like a bonfire and a pub and wet leaves.’

  She watched him inhale deeply. ‘It does.’ She liked the way he phrased things, without pretension or flowery words or fear of offence. This was exactly what their house smelled of – bonfires, pubs and wet leaves.

  ‘This way, Mr Grayson-Potts!’ She climbed the slightly twisted, creaking wooden staircase.

  ‘My name isn’t Mr Grayson-Potts.’ He stood on the bottom step and spoke loudly.

  ‘Oh?’ She turned to face him, trying to quell her rising sense of alarm, wondering at that moment where her parents were, as her eyes darted to the hallway and the front door behind him. She realised for the first time that she was maybe in a vulnerable situation with this stranger, alone in the house. Who was he then, if not the man written down in the guest book?

  ‘I am Grayson Potts, but Grayson’s my first name.’

  ‘You are Grayson.’ She breathed an obvious sigh of relief.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right, I thought that was your surname and that my mum had made a mess of the booking on the phone. She does that, always rushing, or she doesn’t hear properly. I thought it might be a double-barrelled surname, Grayson-Potts, or that she might have got it the wrong way round.’

  ‘You thought my name might be Potts Grayson?’

  ‘Well, when you put it like that, it sounds less likely, but I haven’t heard the name Grayson before.’

  ‘Most people think of Grayson Perry.’

  She looked at him blankly, too shy to say she didn’t know who he was talking about. Grayson Perry was probably a footballer, a sport about which her knowledge was zero. ‘Why did your parents call you Grayson? It’s unusual – are you named after someone?’

  Grayson shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. I might be.’

  She stared at him, again a little fascinated. This was definitely the kind of thing most people knew about their own name.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked boldly, without elaborating.

  ‘My name’s Hitch.’ She looked at the floor.

  ‘Hitch?’ he queried. ‘Is that your real name?’

  ‘What, you think I was christened Hitch?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  She noted his red flare of embarrassment or confusion – hard to tell which – and she made a judgement call.

  ‘My real name’s Thomasina.’

  ‘Thomasina,’ he repeated. ‘So why did you say your name is Hitch?’

  Still she stared at him, and narrowed her eyes. ‘Because of the hitch in my top lip. That’s what people call me.’ She touched the tip of her finger to it. ‘I was born with a problem, a cleft palate, and I had to get it fixed, but they didn’t do the best job. Nowadays the surgery is much better, neater, and you can’t really tell.’

  ‘So why don’t you get it fixed again if they could do a better job now?’ He held her gaze, his expression earnest, his tone enquiring but not mocking. It felt as if the question came from a place of genuine interest. In return, it was surprisingly easy to be open.

  ‘Because . . . because I’m scared to.’

  ‘Why are you?’

  She gripped the banister and ran her free hand over her mouth, remembering what it felt like to wake with searing fire in her face and crying to be put back under, convinced she might die from the pain that felt like hot knives in her skin.

  Don’t cry, little ’un. Everything is okay . . .

  ‘Because it might hurt – it hurt before. A lot,’ she whispered. ‘And I don’t want to go through that again. I couldn’t. It’s worse when you know what to expect.’

  He gave a stiff nod of understanding.

  ‘Who calls you Hitch?’

  She shrugged. ‘Everyone.’

  ‘I’d never call you that. I think it sounds mean.’

  The way he spat the words suggested that meanness, indeed bullying, was something he not only understood but detested, and she liked him all the more for it.

  ‘Okay.’ She resumed climbing the stairs.

  ‘I’ve never heard the name Thomasina, which is kind of funny, as you’ve never heard the name Grayson.’

  ‘Does anyone ever shorten Grayson?’

  ‘My dad, to Gray.’

  ‘Gray,’ she repeated, glancing back at him, and for a reason she didn’t fully understand Grayson Potts looked a little overcome with emotion.

  ‘Thom,’ he suggested, and again their laughter burbled in unison. She looked up and was convinced she saw a rainbow-tinted cloud of happiness, as soft as feathers, dancing over their heads.

  Hitch opened the bedroom door and showed the guest from London into the room. He was odd, for sure, yet fascinating to her – not weirdly odd, but different. She watched as he placed his bag on the chair in the corner and then walked straight over to the window. Most guests sat on the bed, or at the very least leaned on it to test its softness, or they opened the wardrobe with a hopeful expression, maybe thinking Narnia might be waiting, or they asked where the bathroom was, or for directions to the pub, the number of a local cab firm . . . but it seemed as if these things might all be secondary to him, as he stood with his hands in his pockets and stared out over the rolling fields, drinking in the view all the way down to the bend in the River Severn.

  ‘Are there any street lights?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Street lights?’ It was a question she had not been expecting.

  He nodded. ‘I like street lights.’

  ‘Er . . . no, not here on the lane, but the farm always has lights on so it’s easy to find if you go out and about.’

  He turned to look at her and she again took in his quirky appearance. She studied his rather odd haircut properly for the first time, a short back and sides that was quite neat, but the top and fringe . . . she wondered if the barber had given up the ghost halfway through or been called away. As if he felt her staring, he again used his index finger to scoot his fringe away from his forehead and over his left ear. I
t was a look that might have been incredibly trendy were it not for his clothes, which suggested anything but. Mr Grayson Potts was, she decided, a curious character; he was at once reserved, edgy and yet spoke frankly and without guile. She noticed that he looked at her hair, her eyes, seeming to take in her whole face and not doing what most people did – stare at her jagged lip or make a great show of looking somewhere else altogether. His eyes swept over her face and body without any hint of embarrassment or of trying to be subtle about it; it was more in an appraising way, and one she didn’t mind at all.

  ‘I’ll leave you to get unpacked and whatnot.’

  He looked at her with an expression of bewilderment. ‘Thank you.’

  Holding his gaze, she felt compelled to say more. ‘If you’re at a loose end, I’ll be around the farm. Come and find me, if you like.’ This wasn’t something she usually offered, but she got the distinct feeling that Mr Potts was unused to being away from home alone, and she felt a certain kinship for his apparent sense of uncertainty.

  ‘Okay.’ He nodded, giving no indication as to whether this suggestion had been well received or not.

  Hitch left the room quickly, racing down to the kitchen to prepare the steak pie for supper. Their guest remained in her thoughts. It was odd, as if, having started off by breaking all convention – coming to find her on the farm and not waiting on the doorstep to be shown inside – and then talking so freely, they had quickly smudged the boundaries, changed the rules a little. She felt a touch sorry for him, thinking that, for people like Mr and Mrs Silvioni, who had support and company, a break on a farm was probably great fun, but Mr Potts seemed very alone, and it bothered her.

  She pulled the large china mixing bowl from the shelf above the range and set it on the sideboard. After making the pastry, she rolled it out on to the marble slab and lined the pie tin, leaving a good overhang, which she would trim later. After grabbing a handful of carrots, peas, a fat onion and two lumpy potatoes, she worked deftly, peeling and dicing the veggies and lobbing them into the heavy pan on the hotplate. Next she added the large slab of diced stewing steak from the butcher that her mum had taken delivery of earlier, leaving the meat to brown in the pan. She added seasoning to the pot, along with a handful of fresh herbs, before giving the mixture a stir and beginning the prep on the gravy. It all smelled wonderful. Finally she tipped the meat and veggie mixture into the pastry case, along with the sauce, and topped it off with a lid of pastry, which she washed with beaten egg before shoving it in the medium-hot oven, where it would turn golden brown.

  ‘Why are you humming?’

  She hadn’t heard Emery come into the kitchen. She ignored him, wiping down the wooden countertop with a damp sponge and scraping the vegetable peelings into the little enamel bucket to add to the compost later.

  ‘I said, what you sounding so happy about?’

  ‘You didn’t. You said, “Why are you humming?” ’

  ‘So you did hear me.’ He ran a glass of water and sipped it noisily.

  ‘I always hear you, Emery. I just don’t always answer you.’ She kept her eyes on the bucket of peelings. He finished his drink and thumped the glass down on the table.

  He wiped his wet mouth on his sleeve. ‘I reckon, if I took over Waycott, I’d have to make some changes, but I don’t want you to worry about that just yet.’

  ‘I don’t worry about it at all, Emery. Pops would have to be crazy to leave the place to you.’

  ‘Not if I was the only person he could leave it to – if, say, your golden-balls brother never comes home from Brokeback Mountain.’ He watched her face closely.

  ‘You don’t fool me, Emery, and you don’t scare me.’ She ignored his insinuation, letting her eyes meet his briefly, hoping the loud heartbeat in her ears wasn’t audible to him. Her words were assured and yet had the underlying tremor of someone not used to standing up to her bully. He jumped forward suddenly, stamping his feet as he did so and causing her to start. The bucket slipped from her hand and went clattering to the floor, its contents scattering across the flagstones.

  He smiled at her and she felt her heart clatter too, within her ribs.

  ‘I think we both know part of that’s not true.’ He spoke in no more than a whisper before disappearing up the stairs and, just like that, he drew the happy feeling from her soul and replaced it with something else: a deep, dark, lingering thread of sadness; an echo of a fear as to what her future might hold.

  Oh, Jonathan, please come home!

  ‘That would be great.’

  ‘What would be great?’ She spun around, not expecting to hear the voice from the doorway. Mr Potts hovered in the hall. She saw that he’d taken off his work jacket and swapped it for a thin-knit V-necked jersey.

  ‘You said, if I was at a loose end, I could come and find you and you’d be around the farm.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I did say that.’ She sniffed and pulled her thick hair into a messy ponytail, fastening it with the band she kept on her wrist.

  ‘I’ve hung my stuff up and I wasn’t sure what I should do now.’ He stared at her, as if she might have the answer, his expression oddly endearing in its clarity.

  ‘Right.’ She looked him up and down, a little taken aback. This was a most unusual situation. Apart from the odd child who wanted to come and hunt for eggs or pet a pig, most guests kept themselves to themselves and let her go about her business. ‘Do you want to come out on the farm with me?’

  ‘Sure,’ he offered, again with a tone of indifference that might have been annoying, were it not for his eager stride into the kitchen, usually a no-go area for guests.

  She gathered the peelings into the bucket. Mr Potts hovered, as if unsure whether to help or not. The floorboards over their heads flexed under Emery’s weight, before he returned downstairs. He arrived quickly in the room before she had a chance to brief their guest, not that she was sure of what she would have said.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Emery said, with a distinct smirk.

  ‘Hello.’ Grayson raised his hand in greeting.

  ‘So you’ve got yourself a little friend,’ Emery whispered, as he passed her by on his way back out into the yard.

  Hitch looked back at Grayson, embarrassed in case he might have heard. ‘That’s my cousin. Ignore him.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He followed her out to the cowshed. She noticed how he seemed content to walk in silence, quite unlike most people, who might feel the need, when newly acquainted, to punctuate the air with meaningless chit-chat or to ask questions in an attempt to get to know the other person better. She patted her thigh and ran her hand over Buddy, her boy, who walked close at her side.

  ‘I think you might be right, you know,’ he said.

  ‘About what?’ Not for the first time that day, she wondered how she’d lost the thread of the conversation.

  ‘About me liking dogs. I quite like your dog. He seems happy.’

  She smiled at his observation. ‘I hope he is. I hope all our animals are. I couldn’t stand it if they weren’t. I think animals are so much nicer than people.’ She was aware of the rare confession and felt the tingle of nerves at how it might be received.

  ‘Do you?’ He didn’t laugh or snicker, and she was grateful.

  ‘I do. I think you’re right – people can be hurtful, but animals don’t know how to be mean to us, not unless we’re cruel to them or they’re afraid or just being protective. They’ll only turn on you with good reason; at least, that’s what I think. Animals trust us, and looking after them feels like a privilege.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’ He reached out and gingerly ran his fingertips over Buddy’s flank. ‘He does feel nice, soft.’

  ‘If you can earn the love of an animal, they will love you for their whole life.’ Hitch grabbed the plastic buckets from the feed unit and tipped the milk formula into it.

  ‘I suppose, if humans are taking their mother’s milk, the calves have to be given this.’ He looked on with an air of disapproval, typica
l of a city boy.

  ‘Something like that,’ she said with a smile. ‘These are our autumn batch; they’re about six weeks old now and so they have milk and water, but they’ll be put to grain in another couple of weeks. A few went to market today.’

  ‘I guess farming is just like having pets but on a bigger scale – you feed them, care for them and then they die.’

  ‘Kind of, but they’re not supposed to be like pets. They’re supposed to be a commodity, but I love them all. I can’t help it.’

  ‘And you love Daphne the most because you think she’s the prettiest.’

  She smiled, liking the way he offered the fact without any hint of mockery. ‘I do.’

  ‘Do you name the calves too, like you have your chicken?’

  She laughed. ‘I’ve named all my chickens. And yes, I do name the calves, but I haven’t told anyone that. They’d think I was stupid. This one is called Maisie-Moo.’ She pictured Emery’s mocking sneer as she pointed to the big-eyed beauty with the longest lashes.

  ‘I don’t think you’re stupid.’

  ‘You’ve only just met me. I might be really stupid and you just haven’t seen it yet.’

  She won’t get any certificate of learning and she won’t win any races . . .

  He appeared to consider her suggestion. ‘It’s possible, but I think to take care of animals and care about them like you do is not a stupid thing. I think it’s a smart thing. A really smart thing.’ He picked up one of the buckets and held it at an odd angle from his body, as if the contents might be toxic.

  Hitch called the calves as she walked further into the shed: ‘How we doing today? I’ve got your milk. Come and have a drink, my lovelies!’ She tipped the bucket into the long trough, watching as each barged their neighbour with their strong head, trying for a better position, gulping noisily at the milky liquid, lapping it with eager tongues and caring little that it splashed over their noses and faces.

  ‘Tip that one in too,’ she urged.

  ‘You’ll have to do it. I’ll drop it.’ He handed her the bucket.

  The two watched as the baby cows drank their fill.